Folkform

A decade of explorations and design in the wooden board Masonite is on display at the Academy of Fine Arts. In connection with the exhibition, the book Produktionsnoveller is also published.  "We live in a time when we have less and less knowledge about how manufacturing takes place. That there has historically been a direct connection between an industry and the people, traditions and material resources of the place is easily forgotten," says Anna Holmquist, founder of Folkform, together with Chandra Ahlsell.

Sweden's last Masonite factory was in Rundvik in Västerbotten. It was discontinued in 2011. "Masonite" has become synonymous with a whole range of different types of wood boards. This exhibition takes its point of departure from the design duo Folkform's furniture design in the last slabs of the brand Masonite, spelled with a capital "M" and an "e" at the end, a wood fiber material that was manufactured at the factory in Rundvik. The exhibition shows, among other things, a series of cabinet furniture and other objects in Masonite designed by Folkform. Each cabinet is a collage of Masonite from different eras and a monument to the last Masonite factory in Sweden.

The factory was built in 1929 and during its 82-year production history materials were produced for everything from bed bases, boats, sports cabins, wall panels and ceilings in residential buildings as well as panels for the Masonite pavilion at the Stockholm exhibition in 1930. The machines from the factory in Rundvik were moved after the factory was closed in 2011 to Thailand where a new factory has been built from the old machine parts. "With the last factory in Sweden closing, the Masonite disc became history and a cultural heritage," says Anna Holmquist.

The industrial craftsmanship that Folkform had documented during the process at the factory now also had another function. The pictures and the short memory stories from production experiences, the so-called production novels, became historical documents of a production. For every factory the art and design duo Folkform has worked with (2005-2023), they have documented the production mainly in collaboration with documentary photographer Magnus Laupa. In connection with the exhibition, this material collected in book form, Produktionsnoveller, is being published for the first time. The publication also constitutes Anna Holmquist's thesis in artistic research. (Disputation takes place at the Art Academy on April 14) The book mainly depicts production at the Masonite factory, but also production from other manufacturing industries. The completed items are displayed with the materials they are made from. Documentation and reflections on the creation process of the final products are presented together with images - and create the so-called production short stories.