Here you can learn more about tobacco and matches and their history, that begins already for 8000 years ago.
From clay pipes to moist snuff
Tobacco usage was introduced to Europe by Columbus and his crew after their discovery of America in 1492. It spread rapidly, reaching Sweden in the early 1600s.
In the 1600s, Swedes smoked pipes made from clay. In the 1700s, it became the fashion amongst the nobility to take snuff nasally from elegant snuffboxes. Snuff-taking habits changed in Sweden around 1800, and instead of taking snuff nasally, people placed a pinch of moist snuff under the lip. But by now, it was a habit that had spread down to the lower classes.
The more well-to-do townsfolk smoked long pipes or shifted over to cigars, which made their breakthrough in about 1840, with cigarette smoking becoming commonplace after World War II.
The 1960s saw the first reports to sound the alarm about the hazards of smoking, and in the early 1980s, cigarette smoking began to decline, whilst snuff taking increased. Today, Sweden has the lowest percentage of cigarette smokers in the western world, but the world´s highest per capita consumption of moist snuff.
No smoke without fire.
The Swedish Chemistry Professor, Gustav Erik Pasch, invented the safety match in 1844, but it was not a big hit until the brothers Lundström in Jönköping developed it. Interest in the safety match began to be aroused when it was awarded a medal at the 1855 Paris World Exhibition, but sale of the popular but dangerous phosphorus matches was not banned until 1901 in Sweden.
Match factories multiplied in vast numbers and Sweden has, over the years, been home to more than 170 such factories. The first factory was actually in Stockholm, although it is Jönköping that has gone down in history as the great match town. Nowadays, all Swedish matches are made in Tidaholm and Vetlanda.
Our exhibition contains boxes, labels, lighter pistols and striking surfaces.
