Blaafarveværket
Encyclopedia
Modum
Modum is a municipality in Buskerud county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Hallingdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Vikersund. The municipality of Modum was established on 1 January 1838 .The area has a long tradition of skiing with several famous...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, founded by King Christian VII
Christian VII of Denmark
Christian VII was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766 until his death. He was the son of Danish King Frederick V and his first consort Louisa, daughter of King George II of Great Britain....
of Denmark-Norway in the 1770s, became the largest industrial company of the country in the mid-19th century. The works mined cobalt ore and manufactured by smelting blue cobalt glass (smalt
Smalt
Smalt is powdered glass, colored to a deep powder blue hue using cobalt ions derived from cobalt oxide . Smalt is used as a pigment in painting, and for surface decoration of other types of glass and ceramics, and other media...
) and cobalt blue
Cobalt blue
Cobalt blue is a cool, slightly desaturated blue color, historically made using cobalt salts of alumina. It is used in certain ceramics and painting; the different cobalt pigment smalt, based on silica, is more often used directly in tinted transparent glasses...
(cobalt aluminate) pigment. At the time, it employed more than 2,000 workers, and in its heyday supplied 80 percent of the world market for cobalt pigments.
In 1823, the company was acquired by Baron
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...
W. C. Benecke of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Benjamin Wegner
Jacob Benjamin Wegner
Jacob Benjamin Wegner was a Prussian-born, Norwegian investor, industrialist, diplomat and landowner.-Biography:Jacob Benjamin Wegner was born in Königsberg in East Prussia. He was from a shipping family...
of Königsberg
Königsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...
. Wegner also took over as director general, a position he held until 1849, and in his time instituted many important social reforms for the workers. The production of pigment at the works ceased in 1857, but mining was kept up until 1893.
Since 1978, Blaafarveværket has hosted an art gallery
Art gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
, which over the years has exhibited the works of many major Norwegian artists, as well as some foreign ones. In 1993, one hundred years after mining ended, the old cobalt mines opened as a tourist attraction, and the entire area now serves as a museum.