If you are Dutch, like me, there is no way to avoid it. It tried to do my best but… once in your life you need to post a picture of a windmill.

But there is a good reason. Some time ago I have sold a BPO Orange Ericofon to a lady in the US. She asked me if it was possible to make a picture of the phone with a windmill. As there are 2 windmills quite close to where I live this was fairly easy to do. So I went there and took some pictures.

This windmill is called “De Visscher”. It was build by Ben de Visscher in 1875 and was in service until 1961. All that time it functioned as a flour mill.

This windmill is called “De Wilde” and was build in 1898 by Leonard Kouwenberg. It functioned until December 31st 1936 when it was destroyed by a fire. As from the mid 1970’s it was restored and painted white. It functioned as a flour mill, but also as a mill for oak-tree bark for the local leather industry.

And actually it was a nice suggestion as I like history in general, but local history (and of course Ericofon history) in particular. It was a pity that the weather wasn’t a bit better. A blue sky would have been nicer.

There is not so much news to share at this moment. I can hardly find any interesting new Ericofons. O, don´t understand me wrong, I am not complaining if you see what I added already this year. The 2 swirls were a surprise a few months ago and they are at the center of my collection.

Maybe I just need to manifest another “unreachable” model. It might help, but I hope it does not hurt :-). This one is currently on the top of my most wanted list. The transparent 700.

Modern art and classic art. The combination of old and new things is sometimes beautiful.

This picture was made in my living room. The Ericofons as new art in the cabinet that you already have seen. The classic painting next to it, is a reproduction of a self-portrait of Rembrandt. The painting was made by a local painter Johan Rockx (1892-1952) and it is most likely a study from him dating back to the 1920’s or 1930’s. He became more famous for his “ship and harbor view” paintings later on.

The painting was adopted by my parents around 1970. Two years ago, I inherited this. Not because I think it is beautiful but because it has always been here. It reminds me of my childhood and therefor it will always stay here.

Nice things have happened!

Earlier this month I was contacted by a Swedish Ericofon collector, Johnny. He did have a few interesting Ericofons for me. So in the end I got 2 new Ericofon shells in the mail today (26-02-2026).

The story goes that these 2 Ericofons were taken (…) from the production location by a lady working there. The lady had them on her attic in Olofström until 2001, the moment Johnny got them from her. Now they end up in my collection. Which is very, very nice.

In the beginning of the 1960’s, in the struggle against the de-population in the south of Sweden, an Ericsson production facility was opened in Olofström in the Blekinge region. It closed down in 1982. Most of the Ericofon production took place in Karlskrona, so the Blekinge region was already heavily involved in this production process. It is most likely that these models come from one of the production plants in that region. Olofström itself sounds plausible.

These are not shells that were made in between 2 production colors. In an earlier post on swirls I told that this was the normal way of ‘swirl production’.

In these shells I see at least white, red and some grey in their color palette. The lady who took them confirmed they put some leftover colors in the machine for ‘fun’ and then took the shells home. They must have done this while there was no supervision in the plant. Both shells were taken directly from the molding process as they do not have any after-processing done such as holes and notches.

What is nice to see, is that the swirling pattern is more or less the same on the 2 shells. Although the colors are different, the flow of the plastic is the same every time. Of course this is logical in a industrial production system, but it is nice to see that they are actually twins.

To get swirls in my collection was a dream that I never thought was possible. So far, I have never seen any swirls for sale in the past years. Thanks Johnny to give me the opportunity to get these 2 nice ones!