Tom Ahlström

Tom Ahlström (born 30 May 1943) is a Swedish industrial designer. He is the co-founder of A&E Design.

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Quick facts Born, Citizenship ...

Tom Ahlström

Born	30 May 1943 Helsinki, Finland
Citizenship	Sweden
Alma mater	Konstfack
Occupation	Industrial designer
Relatives	Stig Ahlström
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Biography

Ahlström and his identical twin brother, Stig, were born on May 30, 1943 in Helsinki, Finland, to a Swedish-speaking Finnish mother and a Swedish father who worked as a businessman in Finland's steel industry.^[1] He grew up in Västerås, Sweden, and moved to Stockholm in 1964. He studied crafts and silversmithing at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. While a student, he met Hans Ehrich, with whom he subsequently founded A&E Design (Ahlström and Erich) in 1968. The pair designed products such as the 1230 Diskborsten 'dishwashing brush' for Jordan A/S, of which tens of millions of examples were sold; as well as the ticket dispenser and numeric split-flap display for the AB Turn-O-Matic M80 Könummersystem 'queue number system' that "can be found in most supermarkets."^[2]^[3]^[4]

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Exhibitions and museum collections

Designs by Ahlström and Erich are in museums such as the Möbeldesignmuseum,^[5] Nasjonalmuseet,^[6] Röhsska Museum, Nationalmuseum,^[7] the Vitra Design Museum and Pinakothek der Moderne in Germany,^[8]^[9] and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[10]^[11]

In 2018, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm staged a retrospective of Ahlström and Ehrich's work.^[2] The exhibition included handmade models and prototypes, sketches, drawings, and finished products from the A&E Design archive, which the designers donated to the museum in 2015.^[12]

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Publications

Widengren, Gunilla (1994). Tanken och handen: Konstfack 150 år [The Thought and the Hand, Konstfack 150 years] (1st. ed.). Stockholm: Page One Publishing. ISBN 91-71-25-018-2.
Wickman, Kerstin; Landén, Anders (2018). A & E design: the book. Bromma: Business History Publishing. ISBN 978-91-984266-4-9.

Biography

Exhibitions and museum collections

Publications

References

External links

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