For more than a century, Herman Bergman Konstgjuteri has been the great bronze foundry of Scandinavia and a cornerstone of Swedish art history. It was here that the golden age of Swedish sculpture took shape in bronze, from Carl Milles's celebrated fountains to the monuments of Carl Eldh and Bror Hjorth. Its mastery of both the ancient lost-wax technique and sand casting made it the natural partner of the country's finest sculptors, while its production of lighting and decorative metalwork in the early twentieth century places it at the heart of Swedish design history too. A mark from Bergman remains a hallmark of exceptional craftsmanship.
Herman Bergman was born in 1869 and learned his craft in the most demanding workshops of his day. He began as an apprentice at Meyer's art foundry in Stockholm and went on to serve as master founder at Scheffer & Walker in Berlin, foundry manager at the goldsmiths C.G. Hallberg, and managing director at Otto Meyer's, before setting up on his own. His firm was registered in Stockholm on 24 January 1895, with premises at Roslagsgatan 31, and in 1908 it became a limited company, AB Herman Bergman Konstgjuteri.
The foundry's longevity rests on its command of two complementary techniques. The first, cire perdue or lost-wax casting, reaches back to antiquity and suits highly detailed sculpture and objets d'art. The second, sand casting, a child of the industrial age, proved ideal for large statues and monuments.
Its most important relationship was with Carl Milles, who began casting with Bergman around the turn of the century. It was the start of a lasting friendship: Bergman's cast more of Milles's sculptures than any other foundry, and it was Herman Bergman himself who found Milles the plot on Lidingö where Millesgården would rise. Among the works cast there are Milles's Poseidon in Gothenburg, Europa and the Bull in Halmstad and the Orpheus fountain in Stockholm, as well as Bror Hjorth's Näckens polska in Uppsala. Carl Eldh, the creator of the Branting monument, and Eric Grate were among the many sculptors who entrusted their work to the foundry.
Alongside its sculptural work, the foundry produced lighting and other metalwork in the early twentieth century, and from 1916 to 1921 it engaged the designer Elis Bergh.
In 1950 the foundry moved to a new building in Enskede, in the south of Stockholm, designed by the architect Kaleb Sjödén beside the Skogskyrkogården, the Woodland Cemetery. It is the only building in Stockholm known to have been built specifically as an art foundry. Herman Bergman died in 1954 and was succeeded by his sons Folke and Per-Gösta, while his daughter Astri, wife of the troubadour Evert Taube, became a sculptor in her own right. Today it remains Sweden's oldest art foundry, and continues to cast both historic works and contemporary sculpture.
