Floor Lamp by Svend Aage Holm Sørensen for ASEA, 1950s

Danish designer Svend Aage Holm Sørensen (1913-2004) is known for his self-produced lighting designs dating from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Despite the desirability of his designs on the vintage market, there is a lack of biographical information on the designer and his eponymous manufacturing company.

It is speculated that Holm Sørensen designed lights for well-known Danish lighting manufacturers Fog & Mørup and Lyfa in the 1950s, before establishing his own lighting company, Holm Sørensen A/S to produce and distribute his own designs.

Holm Sørensen’s style varies greatly, with designs from the 1950s truly reflecting the mid-century modern lighting  style, with clear influences from the De Stijl and Bauhaus movements. His attenuated floor and table lamps contain the classic tri-pod base that was popular at the time, referencing such designs as H. Th. J. A. Busquet’s Pinocchio Lamp (1954).

From the 1960s onwards, Holm Sørensen’s style changed utterly. His designs diverged from colorful, geometric table lamps and floor lamps, to pendants with unfinished brass and copper surfaces. These pendant lamps showcase Holm Sørensen’s interpretation of the Brutalist style, which was popular from the 1950s to the mid-70s. Originally coined by the Swedish architect Hans Asplund, the style  was internationally espoused by many iconic designers, including Le Corbusier.

Although there is a dearth of information available on the designer himself, many of Svend AAge Holm Sørensen’s designs supply a robust market for his modernist and brutalist designs which are sought by vintage lovers in Denmark and around the world.

An acronym for Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (in English, the “General Swedish Electrical Limited Company”), ASEA was a Swedish manufacturer of electrical products and industrial infrastructure. While broadly known for the more large-scale parts of the catalog—e.g., steam turbines for power plants, high-speed locomotives for passenger railroads, etc.—ASEA endures in hearts of design lovers for their midcentury interior lighting collections produced in collaboration with venerated designers like Gunnar Asplund and Hans Bergström.

Formally founded in 1893 by Ludvig Fredholm, ASEA was established in industry-friendly Västerås, a central Swedish city with favorable access to railways and hydroelectric power. The company spent its first decades exclusively producing generators and motors for partner Jonas Wenström’s “three-phased” electric power systems, a revolutionary first variation on what is now the most common method used by electrical grids worldwide to transfer power. Although this kind of heavy equipment would form the basis of the company’s 20th-century output, in 1911 ASEA began to develop more lightweight products, including lighting fixtures for the Swedish home.

Its production most prolific from the 1930s through the 1960s, ASEA’s lighting design spanned desk, table, floor, and wall lamps, as well as chandeliers, pendants, and other ceiling lights. While many of ASEA’s lighting designs remain unattributed, there are notable exceptions: Lisa Johansson-Pape’s opaline-glass Onion series, for instance, for which Johansson-Pape was awarded the gold medal at 1954’s Triennale di Milano. Other standout series include Svend Aage Holm Sørensen’s five-armed chandelier (ca. 1950s) and Space Age-style table lamps (1950s); and an array of brass pieces by Hans Bergström, who, while heading Ateljé Lyktan for three decades (1940s, through the 1960s) contributed widely to the ASEA catalog.

ASEA persisted in the Swedish lighting industry until its merger with the Swiss company Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC) in 1988, which resulted in the ABB group.