Owing to our large readership outside Sweden, we are including a summary in English of the more comprehensive guides in the magazine. We hope this can be of help to those of you who don’t speak Swedish but still want to follow us!
PAGE 16 FRUIT PLATTERS
● During World War II, Sweden suffered a banana crisis. Bananas import on a large scale had first begun in May of 1909, when a shipment of 50 tonnes of bananas arrived in Gothenburg. Through clever marketing by the newly formed Banankompaniet, the fruit quickly spread across the country.
Sales of bananas increased in the 1920s. However, in 1940, import came to a complete halt, and it wasn’t until 1944 that Swedes finally saw fresh bananas again.
The rise of the banana coincides with fruit services, which had their golden age in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Special services for fruit had been around for a long time but then only of relevance to a small minority. One example is the Italian fruit service in tortoiseshell – a foreign luxury reserved for the nobility – made specially for the Marshal of the Realm Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie in the 17th century.
Through the course of the 19th century, demand for fruit services grew and by the end of the century, vibrantly coloured majolica services became popular, inspired by the likes of English ceramic manufacturer Minton. Swedish manufacturers also began making plates and platters in a naturalistic style, where grapes and sliced apples were served on plates that resembled cabbage leaves and foliage. With industrialised production, fruit service became affordable for ordinary people. Along with crystal vases and commemorative plates, fruit services were often a popular gift at weddings or 60th birthday celebrations.
For manufacturers like Gefle Porslin, fruit services represented a significant part of production for a long time, alongside dinner services and coffee and tea sets. In the 1930s, Upsala Ekeby renamed some of their saucers already in production to fruit plates, probably in response to increased demand.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, dinner services shrank, with items like ragout dishes and cream cups being discontinued. Also, it had previously been important for the fruit plate to be slightly larger than the sandwich plate, but now people were free to eat their pear and their sandwich on the same plate. And so the fruit plate fell out of fashion.
PAGE 48 SMALL TABLES
● A 1955 brochure about NK’s furniture series Triva tells readers th
