Swedish Traditional Woven Blue Table Runner 48"

Swedish cotton table runner in natural with blue and red stripes.  48" long.  Woven in Sweden.

This is a beautiful traditional 13" by 48" table runner. It was woven in Sweden, and is made of coarse cotton. The background is oatmeal/natural with blue and red stripes. Machine washable. This piece follows a long tradition of Swedish weaving. Here is more information about that history.

During the 16th century, cultivation of flax took on growing importance in Sweden, and from the late 17th through the entire 18th century, domestic weaving developed steadily. Skillful weavers produced fine fabrics and woven cloth that were distributed by door-to-door salesmen known as hawkers. As a result, the textile craftsmanship of Sweden became known all over the world. A merchant system developed later in the 18th century, whereby wealthy farmers bought yarn in bulk, and distributed it to local weavers, who converted it to cloth. The merchant farmers then sold the cloth to wholesalers, often in Gothenburg, or directly to the hawkers. Cotton began to be imported in the early 19th century, and this spurred on the growth of the merchant system and domestic weaving. A merchant could keep up to 1500 weavers employed. The system was so successful that the merchants became increasingly wealthy and began to build grand houses, a number of which can still be seen today in Sweden. The merchants built the first textile mills in the mid-19th century, and these laid the foundation for the burgeoning textile industry. One of these mills was in Rydal, and is now a museum and monument to the arrival of industrialization in Sweden. Most of today’s Swedish textile mills have their origins in the merchant system, including Kinnasand, Ludvig Svensson, and Hagastrand.

Manufacturer: Odin
SKU:	2631-88-048