Kalmar lighting since 1881 _ For over 140 years architects and design professionals have sought Kalmar to produce bespoke lighting. Thanks to namesake Julius August Kalmar's values of design and fabrication excellence, almost immediately after the company's 1881 launch it presented celebrated custom cast-bronze works at Gewerbe Ausstellung Wien, in 1888, and the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

Julius Thedor Kalmar took the business in a new direction. A student at the Vienna school of applied arts under Josef Hoffmann, the founder's son introduced Kalmar to the most progressive movements in decorative arts. By 1925 he was selling designs in Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach's influential avant-garde furnishings shop Haus und Garten. Six years later, Kalmar was making luminaires based solely on Austrian Werkbund schemes.

As an advocate of burgeoning modernism and an exemplar of collaboration and quality, Kalmar played a significant role in this era of design. The company realized lighting concepts for Werkbund members like Frank and Wlach, Clemens Holzmeister, Oswald Haerdtl, Ernst Plischke, and Oskar Strnad. Installations in its Stock Exchange, Opera, and Burgtheater made Kalmar synonymous with a new Viennese aesthetic, generally a marriage of industry and handcraft that was stripped of ornament, reverent toward materials, and honest about construction.

Moving beyond a view of its lighting as humble fixtures intended as background, in the 1960's Kalmar began producing decorative glass objects of many scales, which increased demand for the company's products exponentially.