Cardboard News Network

This article, The Evolution of Paper Products, was discovered in a dumpster by our cardborporters during a trip to Sweden. Written by Per Anders Jerkeman, former consultant at Jaakko Pfiyry Consulting Ltd., U.K. The article appears to have first been published by the Nordisk Pappershistorisk Tidkrift (The Nordic Paper History Association Journal) in 2008.

Last year there was an exhibition at the National Museum in Stockholm called Förfärligt härligt or Dreadful Delight. It showed products from the 19th century, arts and crafts, paintings and sculpture, china-ware and furniture. The objects were often overburdened with ornaments, many were kitschy and vulgar – that was the style, or the lack of style in the 19th century. You can say it showed – in our eyes – a dreadful taste.

That is one way of looking at this fascinating period, anything goes, nothing was discriminated, everything was allowed. There was room for inventors and entrepreneurs. That was the delight of the 19th century.
This was also the era of industrialism. With industrialism the modern society was created; railways transported goods and people; steam powered ships and vehicles; electricity powered engines; Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, Alexander Graham Bell the telephone, Thomas Alva Edison the light bulb, Henry Bessemer the converter for steel production and Carl Daniel Ekman the sulphite process.