Greta Magnusson Grossman’s designs for furniture and lighting devices fulfilled a need for versatile and functional objects that could mix easily with casual living concepts and open-plan interiors that were popular in postwar America. Her Floor Lamp Model 831, manufactured by the California firm Ralph O. Smith and Company, is simply constructed from two metal poles that come together to form a tripod base supporting a bullet-shaped metal shade. The lamp’s poised silhouette led to the creation of its playful nickname, the Grasshopper Lamp. It features an adjustable ball-jointed shade that produces ambient light when pointed upwards or serves as a reading light when tilted down.¹ Table-lamp and pendant-light versions of this design were also available. The floor lamp was available in ten colors, reflecting Magnusson Grossman’s own penchant for colorful modern interiors and allowing the lamp to integrate well in most existing interior schemes.

 

Like her designs for furniture and lighting, Magnusson Grossman’s versatile and functional house designs demonstrate her commitment to the modern lifestyle. She explained that modern design “is not a superimposed style, but an answer to present conditions. That is why it is! It has developed out of our own preferences for living in a modern way. It expresses our habits and our tastes.”² The house she designed in 1956–57 as a personal residence on Claircrest Drive in Beverly Hills, California, epitomizes her dedication to these principles. Aside from the walls of the bathrooms and a fixed wall dividing the living room and the kitchen, the interior space is defined by freestanding cabinets that can be moved to create various spatial arrangements. Additionally, the glass panels surrounding the living room could be moved to fully open the space onto the deck and garden, removing the barrier between the interior and the landscape.³

 

Magnusson Grossman received her training from the Konstfack School in Stockholm, where she specialized in furniture, textiles, and metalwork. In 1933 she opened her first design practice, Studio, in Stockholm. She led a successful career in Sweden as a pioneer of modern design and began studying architecture at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 1939. The following year, however, Magnusson Grossman and her husband, the Jewish English musician Billy Grossman, made the decision to immigrate to the United States to escape the spread of antisemitism and fascism across Europe. They settled in Los Angeles, and Magnusson Grossman opened a studio in Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive, where she continued her innovative design practice and became an important proponent of California Modernism. She designed for various department stores and furniture manufacturers, including Barker Bros., Glenn of California, Sherman Bertram, and Modern Line. She also completed design projects for celebrity clientele, including Greta Garbo and Frank Sinatra. Grossman won acclaim in the 1940s and 1950s for designs featured in museum exhibitions, including the Good Design awards from the Museum of Modern Art in 1950 and 1952. She also designed more than twenty houses in California before retiring in the 1960s. Peppered across the rocky hillsides of Southern California, Magnusson Grossman’s houses are stylistically and technically similar to the well-known Case Study houses. In a short span of two decades, Magnusson Grossman’s innovative approach to design, informed by her Swedish background, helped shape the direction of California Modernism.—Sarah Marie Horne