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Kenneth Bergenblad
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Kenneth Bergenblad grew up in Vetlanda, in the Swedish province of Småland, in a household shaped by art - his father was a sculptor. That early immersion in making things with intention set the direction for what followed. After completing a cabinetmaking apprenticeship in 1965, he went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he absorbed both the functional rigor of Scandinavian craft and the formal vocabulary of mid-century modernism. He had also trained at architect Swebilius's furniture carpentry school in Gotland and at Carl Malmsten's Capellagården on Öland, giving him a foundation in traditional joinery that would later inform the structural logic of his designs.
In 1970, Bergenblad joined Dux Möbel AB - at that point already an established name in Swedish upholstery manufacturing - where he would remain as a designer and interior architect until 1993. The twenty-plus years at Dux were the most productive chapter of his career. His approach centered on what he describes as the balance between colours, shapes and materials: not decoration for its own sake, but form that justifies itself through the relationship between its components.
The work that fixed his name in the design canon is the Spider chaise longue, introduced in 1982. The piece takes its name from the multi-legged chrome base that supports a deep, reclining leather body - a silhouette that looked genuinely unlike anything else being produced in Sweden at the time. The Superspider followed in the mid-1980s, a more expansive evolution of the same formal idea, sometimes produced in faux crocodile leather. The Eagle armchair, launched in 1984, and the Dormi lounge chair from 1979 round out the Dux period, each sharing that vocabulary of chrome structure and generous leather seating surfaces.
In the 1980s, Bergenblad also designed the Wing table and floor lamp - a piece in polished aluminum with a rotating shade - which earned him the Guldlampen Nordisk Design prize. After leaving Dux, he continued working independently under the Bergenblad Design studio and took on projects for NC Nordic Care, where he designed the RIB and STOP furniture series and the RUTER serving trolley. More recently, the Wing lamp was adopted into the collection of Audo Copenhagen (formerly Menu), introducing his work to a new generation of buyers.
Over the decades his designs have been recognized with several prizes: the Resources Council Product Award in New York in 1980, the Diamant Emma in Stockholm in 1994, and the Kulturpriset i Skurups kommun in 2013. He has lived in Skurup, in Skåne, for much of his working life.
On the auction market, Bergenblad's work appears primarily through Bukowskis Stockholm and Crafoord in both Malmö and Stockholm. The Spider and Superspider chairs account for the clear majority of lots - some 31 of 45 recorded items fall into the chairs and armchairs category. Top realized prices include a Superspider liggfåtölj for Dux at SEK 15,500 and a further Superspider lot at SEK 13,500. A Junker dagbädd/soffa has also appeared at auction, reaching SEK 4,000. His name is occasionally spelled 'Bergenbladh' in auction house catalogues, so searching both spellings is advisable when tracking lots.