Designing Sweet Ideas
Materiality and meaning of candy and chocolate on the emerging Swedish mass market
1860–1914
This article deals with identifying ideas and values associated with industrially produced confectionery in the second half of the 19th century up to 1914. The breakthrough of a European beet sugar industry gave rise to a wide range of mass fabricated sweet products – novelties to larger parts of the population. The analysis focuses on how meaning was generated around the sweet objects through the shaping, packaging and naming of sweets. Just as we in the present eat blue elephants, jelly rats and Ferrari cars, a whole universe was elaborated in the early chocolate factories. The supplies consisted of replicated kings and contemporary celebrities, emotions and characters, animals, herbs and a number of objects in the material cultures of everyday life.
First and foremost, it was the material cultures of the bourgeoisie that were reproduced in the early Swedish confectionary industry, i.e. objects related to home furnishing, expensive dishes, leisure time, tourism and adventures. The assortment did not, however, reflect the everyday milieus of the poorer and larger strata of the population. It incarnated desirable things and highly regarded values, material as well as mental. The “rare” and the “dear”, stand out as an overall theme – rare and dear in the sense of the uncommon and adored, the exceptional and longed for. In an emerging mass culture of sweet consumption one literally ate materialized shapes of happiness and pleasure.
By way of regarding the sweet objects as artefacts, as shaped manifested statements, and focus on their association with social and cultural dimensions, the study aims at illuminating how the supplies of sweet substance hit the new markets and were made worth demanding.
