Portals of Beauty
The parish of Hälsingland is well-known for its large, red-painted farms decorated with impressing porches. In Forsa though, there are white doors typical for this parish.They are decorated with ornaments like flowers, fabulous beasts and biblical inscriptions.
The aim of this essay is to compare doors created by the carpenters in Forsa Jöns Mansson and Jonas Lust with the portals by the artist Pehr Westman in the parish of Hemsö, Angermanland, at the beginning of the 19th century. The carpenters are studied in their social, economical, cultural and architectural context.
Jöns Mansson and Jonas Lust developed characteristic mixtures of rococo, Swedish Classicism, empire for decoration of doors, portals, interiors, and furniture. They belonged to a social category called outsiders who were not farmers but often farm-hands, tenement soldiers and craftsmen. Their work can be studied as artistic interpretations of the local mentality, its normsystem, style-codex.
The portals of Pehr Westman in Hemsö, Ångermanland, are considered as independent works by a self-conscious talented artist who did not follow a local aesthetic system. Westman was a farmer himself, but delivered artistically expressive Gustavian portals to local farmers, mansions, burghers in nearest town Härnösand, and Stockholm, where he also had his education. Pehr Westman introduced the Swedish Classicism in Ångermanland. His local cultural knowledge and the style of the regional rural architecture facilitated his introduction of a new style. Storsnickare in Norrland were stylists in independent pre-industrial communities aware of new fashion styles, and of the different tastes in other parishes and nearest town. The craftsman who was at the one with the aesthetics of the parishioners and could add some innovation, was the most sought after, in Hälsingland as well as in Ångermanland.
