Pair of Armchairs With Stool By Alf Svensson For Källemo From 1980s

Swedish architect and furniture designer Alf Svensson worked with a range of organic materials that are today commonly associated with Scandinavian modernism, utilizing rosewood, oak and teak in his cabinets, chairs, tables and other furniture, and opting for leather when it came to creating upholstery for his sleek seating. He worked for several manufacturers including String Seffle AB, Bergbom & Co., Nybrofabriken and Nesto but is best known to collectors for the designs he created for DUX. 

As creative director at Bergboms, Svensson worked with brass and opaline glass to create a range of lighting. He designed sculptural tripod-style floor lamps with bodies of steam-bent solid teak — a popular material with furniture makers of the mid-20th century — while his hanging ceiling lights featured lacquered metal shades that bring pops of color into living rooms and entryways.

Svensson’s role at the lighting manufacturer, which was founded in 1940 by Efraim Ljung — also the founder of Ljungs Industrier — saw him collaborating with the likes of legendary designers such as Greta Magnusson Grossman and Edward Wormley, a favorite of mid-century modern furniture collectors and the longtime director of design for the Dunbar furniture company. 

Svensson also served as the creative director at Ljungs Industrier. In Sweden, Studio Ljungs Industrier AB is the large family-owned parent company of Duxiana (in America, DUX). In 1950, Folke Ohlsson, then leading Ljungs Industrier’s design team, decamped to the States to explore how he could expand DUX’s business, which at that point included a wide range of furniture. It was during this time, in the postwar era, that American tastemakers really sold the citizenry on the warmth and good craftsmanship that characterizes Scandinavian modern design.

Ohlsson established a DUX office not long after he arrived in California, first in San Francisco and later in Burlingame. Svensson, a chief designer in the Malmö, Sweden, office of Ljungs Industrier, was among the top-tier furniture design talent with which DUX collaborated (a list that included Wormley and Bruno Mathsson). Svensson’s Galaxy chair, a comfortable upholstered swivel seat attributed to a partnership between the designer and Yngvar Sandström that exudes Space Age charm, is highly sought after, and Svensson's relationship with DUX yielded similarly attractive sideboards, lounge chairs and other furnishings that are some of his most celebrated works.

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“An object shall stand the wear of the eye!” proclaimed Swedish entrepreneur Sven Lundh (1925–2015), who took over operations at revered furniture company Källemo in 1971. For decades, the innovative brand has accomplished just that with a range of original and unconventional pieces that draw on — and regularly push the boundaries of — Scandinavian modern and postmodern design.

Based in Vänamo in southern Sweden, Källemo was originally established in 1947 before it was taken over by Lundh in 1971. Lundh’s vision for Källemo was to evolve the company and to create sustainable furniture that would be both functional and wholly sculptural. The interest in creating forward-looking seating, case pieces, tables and more that are as much furniture as they are art deepened for Lundh during the 1980s, when Swedish designers began to explore the ideas that underpin postmodernism in their work. 

Lundh sought to secure long-term partnerships with modernist and postmodernist Swedish and European artists and designers such as Jonas Bohlin, the creator of the scandalous Concrete chair, which caught Lundh’s attention at Konstfack’s student exhibition in 1982. Bohlin’s minimalist armchair, featuring an angular steel frame and concrete seat and headrest, was meant to be presented as a sculpture, but it fit Lundh’s idea of “artistic furniture.” Källemo produced the Concrete chair as a limited-edition series, and it became one of the company’s best known pieces. 

Over the years, Källemo has collaborated with Gustav Persson — designer of Källemo’s Bank bench — Mats Theselius, John Vedel-Rieper, Jens Harald Quistgaard, Gunnar Myrstrand and numerous other artists and designers to create its unique collection of furniture. In 1996, Lundh’s son Erik and daughter Karin took the helm at Källemo, which remains a family-owned firm. Today Källemo pieces are held in permanent museum collections throughout Sweden and Europe. 

Find Källemo seating, tables, case pieces and storage cabinets on 1stDibs.