Bang & Olufsen was founded in 1925 when Peter Bang (1900-57) and Svend Olufsen (1897-1949) started making radios in the attic of the Olufsen family home. Bang experimented with Bakelite and in 1938 introduced the compact Beolit 39 which was much smaller than other contemporary radio furniture, and the first product made entirely from Bakelite. It was an instant success, and the Beolit name is still applied to Bang & Olufsen’s modern designs.

The Post is making a flying visit to Copenhagen, so this week we shall celebrate classic twentieth-century Danish design. Hans J. Wegner (1914-2007) began his career as a cabinetmaker and became one of the most influential furniture designers of his time. He is particularly known for his chairs - more than 500 - including the CH24 model designed in 1949 for Carl Hansen & Søn. It is better known as the Y Chair or Wishbone Chair. 

The Swedish financier and art collector Ernest Thiel (1859-1947) was a friend and patron of Carl Larsson. He commissioned several portraits of family members (and himself), including this one of his son, Tage Thiel, painted in 1915. Theil bequeathed his Stockholm house and his entire collection to the nation - it is now the Thielska Galleriet on Djurgården, and there is a room devoted to works by Carl Larsson. 

In 1888, Carl and Karin Larsson moved to Lilla Hyttnäs which became their joint art project. However, once Carl became famous with his beautiful watercolours of family and domestic life, he began to receive prestigious commissions. In 1896 he painted the frescoes for the foyer of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. The National Museum has a collection of his sketches including this, with opera singers rehearsing for a gala performance of Cora och Alonzo.

For Carl Larsson, art was his way out of poverty. Like so many artists of his time, he went to France where, in 1882, he joined an artists' colony in Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, and met Karin Bergöö who became his wife. In 1885/6 they moved back to Stockholm to live in one of the now carefully preserved C18 wooden houses like these at Åsogatan 145; it was here that he painted his well-known snowy street scene.

In the late 1850s, Carl Larsson moved with his family to a poor neighbourhood in Östermalm in Stockholm, but by the age of 13 his talent was being recognised. He  enrolled at the Principskolan, the foundation school of the Academy of Fine Arts which he later joined when he was 16. He supported himself during his studies by working as a photographic retoucher, but also threw himself into social activities, including writing for and illustrating the student newspaper "Pallet-skrapp" . This is one of his clever, lively drawings.

The Post is in Stockholm this week and looking at Carl Larsson's connections to the city. Together with his wife, Karin, he is of course associated primarily with Lilla Hyltnäs his family house in Sundborn, almost three hours north west of Stockholm. But he was born in 1853 into difficult and impoverished family circumstances in Gamla Stan, Stockholm's old town. This is his birthplace, Prästgatan 78, photographed in the 1920s, with a plaque to the left of the door.