Hans Bergström

When the young artist Hans Bergström decided in the 1930s to focus his artistic practice on creating modern lighting in Sweden, his decision would revolutionise Swedish lamp manufacturing and the attitude towards electric lighting for the decades that followed. Hans Bergström’s trajectory stretches from 1930s Functionalism to the ‘Swedish Modern’ of the 1940s. When plastics were introduced in the 1950s he was one of the first to implement the new material in modern lighting. At the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and despite being only 20 years old and not yet having graduated from the industrial design program at the Technical School (what is now Konstfack) in Stockholm, he confidently introduced himself to the metalware manufacturer Ystad-Metall as a designer. Bergström and his wife Verna started the studio Ateljé Lyktan in Helsingborg in 1934.

Shortly after the Second World War Bergström began to regularly participate in exhibitions and by the mid-forties, his work had, through the agency of the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design, already reached as widely as the USA and South Africa. Ateljé Lyktan, which Hans and Verna established, later moved to Åhus and became an important craft industry in the area. They employed forty or so seamstresses and metal workers, some of whom had come from Ystad-Metall, where Bergström had previously acquired his knowledge of the craft. At the same time the couple also established a combined design shop and showroom in Kristianstad, where the world could see what they were doing. As the forties came to an end the light from Ateljé Lyktan shone more brightly than ever before. In connection with an exhibition in 1949 at Bonnier’s new department store in New York, Bergström’s light fittings attracted attention for their sophisticated elegance. When in 1952 his creations were exhibited at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, it was, as far as we know, the first time lampshades made from spun plastic were shown publicly. It is through these achievements, the prominent exhibitions, and his pioneering lighting projects that Bergström gradually became a more widely known name outside of Sweden. He was no longer just a designer – he was a lighting architect. The period between the 1940s and up until the latter part of the 1950s confirmed him as one of the best when it came to architectural lighting, and underlined ateljé Lyktan as a Nordic lighting company at the forefront of innovation.