Swedish Floor Lamp by Agne Jacobssen and Hans Bergström for AB Markaryd, 1950s

Active between the 1950s and '70s—in the golden age of Scandinavian design—Swedish interior decorator and furniture designer Hans-Agne Jakobsson (1919-2009) is best remembered for his softly glowing, glare-free lighting fixtures, which were inspired by the "organic modern" approaches of Danish lighting master Poul Henningsen and Finnish icon Alvar Aalto. Though lesser known today than many celebrated midcentury lighting designers like Jo Hammerborg and Verner Panton, Jakobsson created a range of pendants, floor lamps, wall lamps, and table lamps that showcase a penchant for diverse materials and forms, as well as a deep understanding of lighting effects.

Jakobsson was born in Havdhem on the island of Gotland in Sweden in 1919. He first apprenticed as a carpenter and then continued his education in Gothenburg, graduating with a degree in architecture. He was hired by General Motors as an industrial designer and subsequently worked as an assistant to both Carl Malmsten (1888-1972)—one of the most prominent figures in Swedish design—and Werner West (1890-1959).

In 1951, Jakobsson founded his eponymous furniture manufacturing company, Hans-Agne Jakobsson AB in Markaryd, Sweden, which is sometimes referred to as AB Markaryd. Although Jakobsson designed and produced various types of furniture, his lighting received greater international attention. Experimenting with a wide range of materials—including brass, iron, glass, fabric, and wood shavings—Jakobsson mastered both the direction and color of light. His designs are known for their hidden bulbs and streamlined ornamentation, which created diffused, muted lighting.

Jakobsson’s career was prolific to say the least. His company produced over 2,000 separate lamps in fifty years. Jakobsson’s own body of work includes laminated pine pendant lamps, large bulbous glass chandeliers, all manner of muted lighting, and even Pop Art-inspired sconces. Examples include the outdoor light Tratten S2064 (1954), Estrella V258 Wall Lamp (1950s), Lamingo T325 Celling Light (1950s), his pinewood cylindrical B128 Table Lamp (1960s), BN26 Table Lamp (1960s), and Diana V155 Wall Light (1960).

One of Jakobsson’s best known designs—often referred to as the Laminated Pine Pendant—is believed to be the happy result of a temporary solution to a glaring light in Jakobsson’s Christmas display shop window in the mid-1950s.Wishing to defuse the bright light, he fashioned a pendant out of pine wood chips, which admirers were soon seeking to buy. Jakobsson began producing this design from his own factory in the late 1950s and achieved international success. Around 1970, Jakobsson’s design for a very similar laminated pine lamp was picked up by IKEA. This model was not produced in Jakobsson’s factory but by his partner, Ellysett AB, who manufactured several of Jakobsson’s designs. Ellysett was subcontracted by IKEA (also based in the town of Markaryd), and the pendant was soon sold around the world.

In the 1970s, Jakobsson launched a collection by Swedish designer Torsten Orrling, which referenced Pop Art using sheets of brass, copper, aluminum, and the plastic-like astralite and which showed the influence of Verner Panton. This was one of only a few lines produced by Hans-Agne Jakobsson AB that was not designed by the founder himself.

Swedish architect-designer Hans Bergström was born in 1910 in Karlshamn. After completing secondary school in 1927, he worked for several years at the Ystad-Metall metal manufactory in Ystad, where he designed lamps, mirrors, bottles, jars, and bowls. In 1929, he enrolled in Stockholm’s Konstindustriell Skola (now known as Konstfack), notably designing a chandelier (1932) for a church in Iggesund for his thesis project. After graduating in 1933, Bergström returned for a short time to Ystad-Metall before establishing his own lighting firm, ateljé Lyktan, in 1934 in Helsingborg. In 1935, he and his wife Vera relocated the atelier to Åhus, on Sweden’s southeast coast. Not long after, Bergström also established a showroom in neighboring city Kristianstad.

Guided by the mantra, “Light must be white and shine freely,” he designed and produced functional yet modern fixtures that were intended to brighten up entire spaces. Bergström was ateljé Lyktan’s creative director for three decades, and, up until the beginning of the 1960s, the company’s sole designer. A great many of Bergström’s designs were one-offs, numbered but nameless.

During the 1940s in Sweden, cage lamps were widely popular, often featuring plant or animal motifs as appliques to the structure. Examples from Bergström include his Model no. 3 (1930s) and Model no. 5C (1940s). In the mid-1940s, Bergström began designing lights with fabric lampshades as an alternative to metal, which was in short supply due to the war. With the introduction of plastic in the 1950s, Bergström experimented with new lighting techniques. He developed a new method that involved spraying plastic threads onto a rotating wire frame, which resulted in both a patent and the spherical Model no. 166 Light (1952). A somewhat similar technique would later be used by the Castiglioni brothers for their cocoon-like Viscontea Lamp (1960), Taraxacum Chandeliers (1960), and Gato Table Lights (1960) for Flos.  

Bergström is most well-known for his minimalist Model 181 Lamp (1950), also known as Struten, which was awarded a Gold Medal at Milan’s Triennale in 1954. The lamp was a favorite of his friend, Swedish architect-designer Bruno Mathsson (1907-1988), who decorated his home with many of Bergström’s designs. Other acclaimed Bergström designs include the Harlekin Series (1958), which included pendant lamps  in several sizes and shapes; the Model 100L (1958), known as Ofir today, inspired by an upturned ceiling rose; and the Model no. 569 Giraffen Floor Lamp (1950s).

Sometime in the early 1960s, Bergström retired and Philips’s Design Manager, Anders Pehrson, became ateljé Lyktan’s Head of Operations in Åhus, steering the company away from bespoke services toward mass production.

Bergström passed away in Karlshamn in 1996. In 2009, ateljé Lyktan celebrated its 75th anniversary and published the retrospective book Ljuset ska vara vitt och lysa fritt–Historien om ateljé Lyktan by Johan Jansson and Staffan Bengtsson. Some of Bergström’s designs remain in production with ateljé Lyktan today—and hundreds (dating back to 1934) are catalogued in the ateljé Lyktan’s archives.