Atelje Lyktan Biography
In 1934, Hans Bergström and his partner Verna Norell acquired a modest house in the artisan district of Helsingborg, Sweden. They began producing lamps and weaving carpets, thus founding the Ateljé Lyktan company. From the beginning, the business was successful and their studio was soon filled with customers eager to purchase their lamps and textile artwork. However, it was above all the fame of their lamps that grew. In 1936, the company moved to the picturesque village of Åhus on the east coast of the Skåne region of southern Sweden. Here they established their company and their residence, starting a new phase of the business. The year before the end of the Second World War, Ateljé Lyktan had to expand its sewers and factories. The limited space of the first studio made it necessary to transfer about ten carpenters to the old police station. With the end of the war, Ateljé Lyktan began to export lighting fixtures outside of Sweden. By 1946, the company had dealers throughout South Africa. In the late 1940s, the company continued to expand and the lamps and fixtures made by Hans Bergström began to spread throughout the country, particularly in luxury homes and public spaces. With the advent of the 1950s and new innovations in materials, Ateljé Lyktan introduced American plastic into its products, making the white light of Åhus accessible to all. Hans Bergström's lighting fixtures gained international fame and his products were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Furthermore, he created impactful light installations for the Academic Society in Lund, attracting attention both in Sweden and abroad. At the Despite the growing demand for Bergström's lighting fixtures, the following years were marked by financial worries for the company. The extensive factory entries at the old station and the expensive renovations and modernizations of their private house caused financial problems. In 1956, the company was restructured as a joint-stock company, with the hope that new investments would save the company from bankruptcy. However, just a few years later, Ateljé Lyktan risked bankruptcy again. Philips, a Swedish company, came in as a financial guarantor to the company's rescue in the late 1950s and in 1962 took over ownership until 1964. In 1964, Anders Pehrson, head of design at Philips, was tasked with completely taking over the company. activity in Åhus. Pehrson, with his business and design vision, saw the potential of many of the lighting fixtures and decided to invest in the mass production of the more marketable models, which proved to be very successful. In 1968, he created and developed one of the greatest successes in the lighting industry in Sweden: the Bumling family of luminaires. Form, function, color and family were the four points of reference that Pehrson considered when creating and marketing new products. In 1972, Ateljé Lyktan supplied 16,300 lamps for the Munich Olympics, the largest order ever in the company's history. The new general manager took the production to a new level, orienting it mainly towards public spaces. A new source of lighting, the halogen lamp, was used frequently in new products, leading to the almost disappearance of normal light bulbs in new designer appliances. In 1990, a wide range of luminaires designed by different designers made up the Ateljé Lyktan assortment, but no one was asking for the Supertube and Bumling models anymore. Olle Anderson designed the Stockholm outdoor luminaire, which today can be seen in every small village and large city. Tommy Govén, a lighting consultant, designed several products that would be crucial to the future of Ateljé Lyktan. One of Govén's greatest successes was Fovea, the world's first luminaire designed specifically for the new T5 slim fluorescent lamp. Even today, Fovea is under development and is a widely used lighting solution in offices throughout Sweden and abroad. Functional lighting gave way to designer products and light bulbs returned to play a prominent role in some of the new products. Around the turn of the millennium, Ateljé Lyktan once again demonstrated that form and function were just as important as the other components. In 1996, Fovea was presented for the first time at the Hanover lighting fair. The same year, Hans Bergström, founder of Ateljé Lyktan, died at the age of 86.
