Brass Gavel

The company that made the brass gavel is Ljuders Nickelsilfverfabrik which was founded in 1876 by Lars-Erik Boman. Boman was the manager at Lessebo Bruk which also owned the Kleva nickel mine and the metal produced there to be refined.

When the company began, various articles were manufactured in pure nickel plate (e.g., coffee sets, snus cans, cutlery). In addition, they manufactured some molded details such as candlesticks, door handles, and candelabras. In the 1880s, production increasingly focused on manufacturing locks and fittings for railway cars.

Vilhelm Moberg, who was from Småland, wrote “The Emigrants,” “Unto a New Land,” “The Settlers,” and “The Last Letter Home.” The first novel relates to the fictional journey of the main characters, Karl Oskar and Kristina, from Ljuder (a parish in Småland) to the New World. It represents the real-life exodus of hundreds of thousands of people.

The first words of the novel are: “This is the story of a group of people who in 1850 left their homes in Ljuder parish in the province of Småland, Sweden and emigrated to North America. They came from a land of small cottages and large families. They were people of the soil, and they came of a stock, which for thousands of years had tilled the ground they were leaving.”

These words set the background for the story, which is also the story of the first period of group emigration.