On the last day of the year 2022 I take the opportunity to wish everyone a very healthy and happy 2023.
The past couple of years have been tough for different reasons. With the pandemic well under control in most parts of the world I hope that 2023 will bring us a bit more quite and piece. Hopefully international relations in eastern Europe will take a more positive turn this year as well.
Let’s dream for the best.
Sometimes you buy a phone that is not as advertised. This phone had some heat damage on 1 side and there was no way to recover it. The seller was so ‘nice’ to misled met with perfect pictures avoiding the spot that could not be overlooked by him. For the rest it really looked perfect.
As it is still summer holiday I decided to create my own ‘intersected Ericofon’. It is nice to see how everything fits into the chassis. It is not really going to be part of the collection, but it is interesting to see this construction so close myself. I believe there is an ‘official’ version of this, professionally made, but I am not 100% sure about it.
The town where I live is often indicated as 013, which is its landline area code before the mobile era. This year it is 213 years ago that this town got the city rights from Napoleon back in 1809.
Obviously a reason to celebrate so I took these pictures at a piece of light art in a dark town district.
People do all kinds of stuff with and to Ericofons. We already had the posts on cloned models, painted models and on lamp models. Now we have a new category: wrapped models.
Ulla-Stina Wikander is an artist located in Sweden. She is wrapping all kinds of weird stuff in cross stitch embroided landscape fabrics, including Ericofons.
If you like it, it must be nice but I prefer my Ericofons natural instead of Zentai. There is one exception of course.
Already for a long time I know that there are playsets from the Ericofon on the market. But never I have bought one. Now I got the opportunity to get one from France although the origin is Italian.
This set reminded me of the 4 intercom sets I made with 2 Ericofons for an exhibition back in 2018.
Two Ericofons connected by a simple wire, functioning as an intercom… a nice playset for kids. In the old days at least. Not sure if these days kids will still be amused by these kind of toys when they have a smartphone or tablet as well.
The size of the phones is approximately the same as the size of the original Ericofon. Nice detail is that the box is showing a wedge, but it contains a flat type of Ericofon (sorry… 😉 ). Each phone runs on a large 3V battery that I do not think are still for sale anymore. From the booklet, the following text I found quite amusing:
The ‘telefoni comunicanti’ playset was manufactured by Ingap, located in Padova, Italy and has article number 6090. They were quite famous with their tin, and later plastic, cars as from the 1930’s onwards. Unfortunately I do not know the year of production but I expect it should have been produced in the 1960’s.
There was also a 2/3 scale Brio Ericofon toy on the market but this one I haven’t seen popping up yet.
On Instagram (yes, you can find me there as well) I encountered some very nice drawings of Ericofons. They were made by Jonn Celemente from Sweden. All credits to this artist!!
Besides these 3 Ericofon related drawings he is also creating very very nice other pieces of art. Please check him out in Instagram as well.
The drawings are beautifully made and some give me a slight feeling of discomfort. This is very personal but this is what I like in art: a grinding feeling here and there does not hurt anyone ;-).
There is this site called TurboSquid where they create all kinds of 3D models. A large scale of different subjects are being modelled. I must say that it is very impressive. Also the Ericofon has been done. Very nicely done!! Not exactly the right touch, but impressive.
I also have one of the pictures from this site as a header on my blog (credits to them). However, independent on how much you do your best on something, there are always some small issues that are not according to reality. 🙂 Do you see it?
Nevertheless it is worth to check out their site.
Update 01/06/2023:
A new 3D was created with a yellow old case. Now the dial is in the right direction. Nice!!
Winter is kicking in now with temperatures dropping every night and the wind comes more and more from the north. The picture reflects for me the cold and darkness of the months to come.
There is not so much happening in Ericofon-land at the moment for me so I am focussing a bit on photography.
There is not so much happening at the moment in Ericofonland. The lockdown is causing a dip here as well. Packages (specially to the USA and Australia) take a long time to be delivered. If being delivered at all… Tracking information is not updated already for weeks. So I am avoiding shipments outside Europe at the moment.
Instead, I decided to create an Insta account and search for information/pictures in that outskirt of the internet. Information is not so much to be found, but pictures more than enough! Even found some of my own pictures back. I am famous. 🙂 The two pictures below of people having the Ericofon tattooed on their arms I found worth sharing as well. Not my cup of tea… 🙂 But nice to share.
Digging though the web (as if I do not have anything else to do) I stumbled on this very nice Dutch picture that I want to share with you.
It is very nice to see a shop window like this, never saw a Dutch image like this before. Looking at the time the Ericofon was introduced in The Netherlands, I expect the picture must be made around 1978/1984. However the images give more a 1960’s feeling to me. The photo was made by Piet Koks who seems to be a former Ericsson employee.
Translation of the texts: -“The Ericofon is ideal“- -“Getting older? No staring, you have the dial in your hand” – -“At the reception. Elegant device in modern design“- -“On every small spot. The Ericofon does not need more space than a cup and saucer“-, and last but not least -“In the bedroom. Horn and dial in one“-.
In fact the first slogan is a strange text as the Ericofon was marketed as Ericofoon and not as Ericofon. The relation between a cup and saucer and a bookshelf is something I cannot really see. All slogans that would not survive anymore in this world, but they are so cute, I had to share this in the future.
Update 20/06/2022: According to ‘Heemkundekring Molenheide’ this seems to be a shop window in the Julianastraat in Rijen, Netherlands from 1956. This was close to the Ericsson premises.