Greta M. Grossman

Greta Grossman was born in 1906 in a coastal town in Sweden. She grew up in a cabinet-making family that valued craftsmanship, materials, and design skills very highly. This made Grossman familiar with the feeling of being the only woman in a male-dominated environment. This meant that she never let prejudices stop her from having a passion for design. Greta used this passion she had learned at a young age to study crafts and design at the university of arts in Stockholm. This led her to win multiple design awards in her early 20s and, in 1933, she open her own studio. Her popularity grew after designing a bed for a famous Swedish princess. This popularity urged Grossman to move to California in 1940 and open a shop on Rodeo Drive along with her husband.

Grossman was among the first to bring the Scandinavian modern aesthetic to southern California's modernist scene. Greta Grossman's take on Swedish design was an instant hit in Los Angles and her popularity was boosted once more by her growing celebrity clientele. In 1947, Grossman designed her most well-known product that is still just as iconic now as it was in 1947. The Gräshoppa Floor Lamp was cleverly designed in two simple line drawings that aimed to represent the silhouette of a grasshopper on a blade of grass. The design, along with the Cobra collection and many others, has been given awards from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and recognised around the world.