ABOUT US

The museum's collections are primarily aimed at preserving and displaying the mechanical aspect of the history of the glass industry. This includes glass presses, pantographs, guilloche machines, centrifuges, semiautomatic machines and the other machines that together enabled a rational mass production from the second half of the 19th century onwards.

These machines are not shown anywhere else, even though they are an essential part of the history of glass industry.
Since we believe in sharing knowledge, we choose to license our material under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
We welcome donations of all kinds (although machines and other big/heavy artifacts may present a problem for practical reasons), books and catalogues are easiest handled in electronic form. If you have something you want to share, please contact us via kontakt@bergdala-glastekniska-museum.se and we can probably work something out!

The museum was born when we were offered, by Kosta glassworks, our first pantograph. We managed to get it here in October 2015. We received grants from Riksantikvarieämbetet (National Heritage Board) to establish the museum: a total of SEK 110 000 over two years. Since then, the museum has not received any public funding.
The museum was run by a local non-profit association, Glas i Hovmantorp.

In August 2023 we welcomed our visitor number 20 000.

The fact that we have now become a foundation does not mean that we have got more money; we are still dependent on volunteer workers.
Workers? Yes: someone needs to maintain both house and machines; someone must show the museum to visitors; someone must continue to gather knowledge (and machines...); someone must present our knowledge in an accessible manner, for example through this website.

If YOU feel that you want to contribute to one of the above, you are more than welcome! Come in when we are open, or contact us via kontakt@bergdala-glastekniska-museum.se. The people you usually meet in the museum are named Kerstin Fröberg, Lasse Hultman and Björn Zethraeus.

If you can't (maybe you live too far away?) - you can still contribute money. We have bank giro 5383-1467 and Swishno 123 365 1627 (only within Sweden). Of course, cash in the museum box will always work! Paypal is another option:

The mission statement of the foundation 
a) Collecting, documenting and maintaining knowledge of the technical and work environment development of the manual glass industry over time.
b) Collecting, documenting and preserving machinery, documents, photographs and other artifacts that illustrate and illustrate the technical and work environment development of the manual glass industry over time.
c) To show collections and disseminate knowledge of the technical and work environment development of the manual glass industry through the ages to the public in the form of physical objects, guided tours, etc., in the form of presentations on websites or other digital media and in the form of lectures, seminars and the like.
d) To continue and maintain Bergdala Glastekniska Museum in "Gamla Sliperiet" (the old cutting shop) behind Bergdalahyttan, in the longer term perhaps in some other location.
e) Conducting study trips and visits that contribute to the purposes a-d.
f) To increase its wealth to be able to, in the long term, distribute scholarships or grants for projects or study trips that contribute to the purposes a-d.
g) To, if necessary to increase income, conduct business activities in order to enable study trips, distribution of scholarships / grants and the like according to e

Today the the board of the foundation consists of Björn Zethraeus, "BGM activist", Björn Arfvidsson, representative of Kulturparken Småland and Angelica Karlsson, representative of Lessebo municipality.

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