No date could be found on the house from Matten when it was dismantled. The age of the timber, however, has given a construction date of around 1570. It is therefore a very early example of a very mature block architecture and the individual elements of building decoration.
In the 19th century, this farm was devoted primarily to stockbreeding. It included various plots of land, barns and grain storehouses, a bread oven and hay stables placed on the middle alpine pasture stations (“Maiensäss”). The rough stone basement contains a number of cellar chambers. Upon it rests a carefully jointed structure of squared logs with projecting wall beams.
An indication of the age of the building is provided by the continuous grooved friezes under the windows and the remarkable configuration of the purlin supports. The windows of the parlour and other rooms were enlarged during the last century, but were reconstructed in their original proportions when the house was reconstructed. The characteristic roof of purlined rafters is covered with shingles.
The large hearth was used not only for cooking but also for cheese-making. The cheese cauldron was hung on a rotating arm called a “turner”. The opening of the baking oven can be seen beside the hearth. The oven extends outside the house proper and stands on wooden supports. It probably replaced an earlier oven-house. The short firewall on the parlour side contains a heating opening and chimney flues for the sandstone stove. The stove dated 1845 bears the names of the then-owners Hans Sterchi and Elisabeth Roth.
On the ground floor, on each eaves side of the house, open stone stairways lead into the rear part of the house, which is open up to the roof and contains a fireplace. Such smoke houses were quite common in the alpine region. In this case, a small larder is partitioned off.
Two rows of windows admit light to the large parlour. The narrow adjacent room probably served as a bedroom. A staircase leads from the kitchen to the upper floor, which rooms are accessible via a gallery running at right angles to the roof ridge. Soot-blackened smoking poles hang above the hearth room. At the rear of the house there is an extension covered with a lean-to roof. Presumably it was built at the same time as the oven was installed. It protects a small pigsty as well as the indispensable wood shed. The privy is also found here.
In the tympanum of the two-storey cheese storehouse from Niederried BE (No. 1022) we find, next to the date 1656 and two Bernese bears, the name of the building owner Christen Blater as well as that of the carpenter Hans Bos. On the first storey it seems there were cheese racks available and the upper storey served for the storage of different kind of agricultural products, tools and wood fuel.
The clever hay shed from Brienzwiler BE (No. 1024) above the Matten house belongs to the last buildings which remain in their original location on the Museum grounds.
Tourism and tradition
Tourism has a long tradition in the Bernese Oberland. The first foreign travellers came already in the late 18th century to visit its lakes, idyllic villages and glaciers. However, the English, French and German tourists admired not only the scenic beauty of the Central Oberland, but also its folk customs, traditional costumes, folk music and dances.
The first alpine herdsmen’s festival, aimed at a middle-class and aristocratic audience, was held on the Unspunnen meadow near Interlaken on the 17th of August 1805. This gave regional folklore a higher status, placed it in the service of tourism – and possibly saved it from extinction.
An example of the economically important
tourism branch is the kiosk from Bönigen BE (No. 1041) built in 1880 for the sale of wood carvings.
