Sunday, 24 May 2026

Sepia Saturday 827 - Men At Work

 

The Sepia Saturday prompt for this weekend shows photo from an old shoe factory, and the host Alan Burnett asks us to "search out your old photographs of factories, workplaces, shoes, boots, benches, leather belts .... or whatever" ... 

At first I thought I have no photos like that... But then a summer holiday trip from the past popped to mind - made with two friends nearly 50 years ago (49, to be exact), to the Swedish provinces Halland, Skåne and Småland. The colour photos in my album from 1977 have faded - but since this is Sepia Saturday, never mind! ;)  I managed to copy some with my phone camera, and edit them a bit.

The friends I was with on this trip were Gunilla and Lena. Gunilla sadly passed away three years ago. (She's the short one in the photos - she stopped growing when she was around 8 to do with health problems and medication with that side-effect.) Lena is the same age as me and since her official retirement (from teaching) is still keeping busy more or less "full time" as a water-colour artist, living on the west coast (where she was also born), and having several exhibitions there every summer.

In 1977, all three of us were living/studying in Karlstad, and that summer went on a car trip together to the southern Swedish provinces of Halland, Skåne and Småland - where we visited several places do with different kinds of handicraft.


 In Halland, we visited the workshop of an old shoemaker, still making wooden clogs by hand. (Wooden soles, leather tops.) I think this was someone Lena knew since before.

From Halland we went on to Skåne, where we visited a ceramics workshop or two in Höganäs - a village well known for several workshops and factories of that kind.

Here are my friends posing near one such place; and then going in...



The photo below is not my own but a postcard (glued into my album).


The province of Småland is best known for its many glassworks. We visited at least two of them, Boda and Kosta. I'm not sure at which of them the two photos below were taken.




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