DesignerSwedish
Albert Larsson
2 active items
In the furniture town of Tibro, a carpenter named Albert Larsson built a small table company in 1938 that would eventually produce 40,000 to 50,000 tables a year. Alberts Tibro, as the firm became known, grew into one of Sweden's most productive small manufacturers at precisely the moment when Scandinavian Modern design was reshaping how people furnished their homes.
After the Second World War, the workshop narrowed its focus entirely to tables - coffee tables, side tables, and the height-adjustable multifunctional pieces that mid-century Swedes were beginning to want. Larsson's designs leaned on the materials of the moment: teak and brass, with clean profiles and legs that ranged from tapered posts to slender tripods. The silhouettes were spare but not severe, comfortable within the domestic idiom of the era.
Two designs define his legacy most clearly. The 'Albertsbordet' (Alberts table) became a signature piece - a teak side table produced in several variants through the 1950s and into the 1960s, with its proportions refined across iterations. The 'Bumerang' sofa table took its name from the gentle curve of its top, a boomerang-shaped teak surface on tapered legs that placed form and playfulness in the same object. Another recurring piece, 'Bord på Burk' (Table in the Jar), featured a compact side table with a distinctive storage cylinder beneath - an efficient solution for rooms that were still modest in size.
The Danish furniture manufacturer Brdr. Petersens Polstermøbelfabrik distributed some of Larsson's side table designs across Scandinavia, extending the reach of the Tibro workshop beyond Sweden. This cross-border presence reflected the broader integration of mid-century Nordic furniture markets, where Swedish craftsmanship found ready audiences in Denmark and Norway.
Note: the Auctionist database also lists a painter named Albert Larsson (1869-1952) from Malmö - a Scanian landscape artist trained under P.S. Krøyer in Copenhagen - under this same slug. The two are distinct individuals, though both appeared on the Swedish art and design market during overlapping periods.
At auction, the furniture designs attract consistent interest. The 'Bumerang' sofa table has reached 6,014 EUR at Stockholms Auktionsverk Hamburg, and 'Albertsbordet' variants regularly sell in the 1,000-1,300 EUR range. The majority of lots appear at Norrlands Auktionsverk, Stockholms Auktionsverk Hamburg, and Crafoord Auktioner across Malmö and Stockholm.