In one of Hälsingland’s most well-preserved farmhouses, we found the original of this plaid half-linen curtain from around the 1920s. The curtain is a typical exponent of the early 20th century industrial interest in Swedish design and Swedish folk tradition. The pattern, the colors and the fine yarn quality are all of the best rural tradition, but not the technique – that it is not handwoven, but woven by machine – is the new thing that the Swedish Crafts Association and other interest organizations worked for at the beginning of the century. With the help of machines, they wanted to simplify and spread the genuine Swedish folk culture to wider circles.

The original curtain hangs as a half-curtain (‘café curtain’) in a stencilled hall. It is equally likely to have existed simultaneously as long curtains in other homes, both in the country and in the city, as ‘allmoge’ was generally a popular style in all social settings in the early 20th century.

The facts
Half-linen. Width 85 cm. Cotton in warp, linen in weft. Checked in blue, rust red, black and white. Machine woven in Sweden for Gysinge. Shrinks about 5-7% in the first wash.

Washing instructions
Hand wash at about 40-50 degrees.

Sold only in whole meters.

Throughout Sweden, people used to have home-woven roller blinds, such as elevator blinds made of striped fabric. The most common color combinations were blue and semi-bleached and red and semi-bleached.

This rustic fabric, woven especially for Gysinge, comes from a farm in Hälsingland and dates from the early 1800s.

The fabrics are shuttle-woven on old-fashioned looms, resulting in smooth, fine and strong selvedges that do not need to be hemmed or cut.

This fabric is a quality product that gets more and more beautiful the more you use it and wash it.

What is unusual about this curtain is the discrete color element in the form of thin, large squares surrounding groups of “mosquito scale windows” in the pattern. This makes the curtain very modern, yet very traditional.

Mosquito net curtains are usually plain white. Another unusual feature is that it is as narrow, only 65 centimeters, as a modern panel curtain, which also means that its width still feels very current. So-called panel curtains can be hung completely smooth, so that the pattern appears, but without the curtains obscuring the view. All in all, “Thea” is a suitable curtain for both the small windows in the cottage and the large ones in the city. The narrow width also means that the curtain can easily be pinned to a curtain board, preferably draped, as the neat selvedges do not even need to be hemmed.

Thea Olsson (1902-1993) was the only daughter of the Gästgivarns mining estate in Wall, which is one of the best-preserved mining estates in the Torsåker region of Gästrikland. When she died, she left behind a lot of valuable movable property, which was auctioned off because she had no family, but a large number of “useless” items remained on the farm, including this curtain, which she probably wove herself.

Thea Olsson and her mother Ida were known to be good at needlework. This curtain pattern is a non-period pattern, which probably left the loom sometime between 1920 and 1940.

Swedish machine woven half linen fabric of solid quality, suitable as a cover fabric for upholstered furniture and for so-called half curtains. Now in even better and more rustic quality. The fabric is now woven in an old loom with a shuttle and thus has smooth, fine city edges, which do not need to be hemmed or cut away. Available in two traditional color schemes, red and white after a model from Röö parish in Uppland and blue and white after an original fabric at Skokloster Castle. Both models are from the 18th century, but the fabric as a variety is found throughout the country during both the 18th and 19th centuries.