Tobacco jar
Designed by Bertil Gardberg, c.1969NIVAL Ref.: IE/NIVAL/KDW/WD/08
While archiving the wood products for the KIlkenny Design Workshop NIVAL project I came across images of an afzelia tobacco jar with a Kilkenny marble lid, designed by Bertil Gardberg circa 1969 (NIVAL/KDW/WD/08). This design, like many in the KDW collection, could have been produced today, and indeed I have seen more recent interpretations of it, which are available nowadays as storage containers. What struck me in the process of archiving this material is that quite a few products were produced to serve the needs of smokers. Smoking was a less maligned activity in the 1960s and 70s than it is today, and therefore beautiful products to house your smoking paraphernalia would have been desirable. If this design were to be relaunched today it would no doubt be for the storage of more acceptable stimulants such as tea, coffee and sugar. So the KDW archive is not just a window into Irish design history, it offers a record of Irish social history made manifest in material objects.
It strikes me that the use of an exotic wood combined with indigenous marble was another way of modernising Irish design through choice of materials in addition to form.
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