Floor lamp model "Grasshopper"
Manufactured by Bergboms
Sweden, 1950s
Aluminum, Brass, Steel
Measurements
37 cm x 36 cm x 124h cm
14,56 in x 14,17 in x 48,81 in
Literature
Andrea Codrington, Greta Magnusson Grossman - A Car and Some Shorts. One Architect’s Journey from Sweden to Southern California, Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm, 2010. Modèle similaire reproduit p. 36, 74-75, 81, 148.
Greta Magnusson Grossman: Designer, Kane, pg. 6 Greta Magnusson Grossman - A Car and Some Shorts, Snyderman and Waern, ppg. 36, 43 Furniture Forum, Vol. 1 Winter 1949, section 3, pg. 3
Biography
Greta Magnusson Grossman maintained a prolific forty-year career on two continents, Europe and North America, with achievements in industrial design, interior design and architecture. In the late 1920s Grossman finished a one-year woodworking apprenticeship in her hometown of Helsingborg, Sweden and was awarded a scholarship to enroll at Konstfack (then known as Högre Konstindustriella Skolan), the renowned Stockholm arts institution. At Konstfack she excelled in her mastery of technical drawing and focused her original design work on furniture, textiles and ceramics. In 1933 Grossman received second place for furniture design from the Stockholm Craft Association, becoming the first woman to receive an award in that category. In 1934 the Swedish Society of Industrial Design awarded her a scholarship to travel throughout Europe and she filed reports of her observations on interior design and architecture for the “Women and Home” section of the Swedish paper Nya Dagligt Allehanda.
In 1933 Grossman and Konstfack classmate Erik Ullrich opened Studio, a store and workshop, in Stockholm. From Studio, Grossman took on numerous commissions designing unique furniture and interiors, garnered abundant press attention and accolades and exhibited frequently at Galerie Moderne, a cultural mecca in Stockholm at the time. As an entry to a large group exhibition at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1937, Grossman famously designed a crib for Sweden’s Princess Birgitta that drew much attention in the press. In 1933 she married jazz bandleader Billy Grossman with whom she immigrated to the United States in 1940, settling in Los Angeles.
