ArtistSwedish
Uno & Östen Kristiansson
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The Kristiansson brothers grew up in Vittsjö, a small village in the province of Skåne in southern Sweden, in a family already rooted in woodworking. Their father operated a furniture workshop there, Vittsjö Furniture, which had been running since 1919. That workshop gave both Uno (born 1925) and Östen (born 1927) a practical understanding of materials and joinery from an early age, shaping an approach to design that always kept craft at its centre.
In 1950, Uno founded his own manufacturing company in the same village and named it Luxus. He drew in his younger brother as co-designer and builder, and together they began producing furniture, lamps, and mirrors that found a clear aesthetic position within Scandinavian modernism - clean lines, well-chosen materials, and a careful restraint that avoided both the ornamentation of earlier Swedish styles and the coldness of harder-edged international modernism. Teak and rosewood were the preferred hardwoods in the early years, in keeping with the dominant material language of mid-century Nordic design.
Through the late 1950s and 1960s the Kristianssons' range expanded into lighting, where they found particular commercial and creative success. In 1968 Luxus presented a collection with brightly coloured textile shades designed in collaboration with Finnish textile artist Marjatta Metsovaara, a pairing that brought additional attention to the company. Around 1966, Östen also took formal control of their father's original workshop, eventually reconstituting it under the name Östen Kristiansson AB before returning to the Vittsjö name.
After 1970, the brothers shifted focus decisively toward lamps and mirrors. Their later work made increasing use of acrylic alongside wood and leather, resulting in pieces with a more forward-looking visual character - wall mirrors framed in oak or backed in rattan, table lamps in moulded plastic, ceiling fixtures in combinations of metal and synthetic materials. This material experimentation without loss of formal discipline is what has made their output from this period especially attractive to collectors of vintage Scandinavian design.
Uno Kristiansson died in 2001 and Östen in 2003. Their pieces appear frequently on the international vintage design market, with platforms like 1stDibs listing over 200 items. At Nordic auctions, Bukowskis has been the primary venue, accounting for the large majority of the 25 works recorded in the Auctionist database. Lighting accounts for roughly half those lots, followed by furniture and mirrors. Recorded sale prices in the database range up to 345 SEK for a table mirror and 248 SEK for a wall lamp, though international platforms typically show considerably higher valuations for their more distinctive pieces.