The information that emerged from our correspondence with the Hammerborg family over the past 18 months has been an important source for our new profile of Jo Hammerborg, and has also provided interesting new perspectives on some of our previous Fog & Mørup blog posts.

The story we wrote in May 2010 about the launch party for Sidse Werner and Leif Alring’s Formland lamps, for example, gains an extra dimension in light of the revelation that Hammerborg was a keen skydiver and pilot and had considerable involvement in the development of the Formland series.

Drawing of Formland Lamp as Parachute

Our new understanding of the designer’s enthusiasm for sports in general and airborne sports in particular, and the fact that he undertook these activities not just for his enjoyment of them but also for the way he found them to be sources of ideas and inspiration in his business and creative life, offers us a new perspective onto the skydiving theme adopted for marketing the Formland series, illustrated in the images above and below.

Fog Morup Formland Lamps Skydiving Theme

Fog Morup Formland Lamps Skydiving Theme

Further light is cast upon Hammerborg’s role in the Formland project by another snippet of information we gained from our correspondence with the Hammerborg family – the fact that Jo would often make use of his pilot’s licence to take other skydivers up for their jumps. This insight allowed us to look at the Formland images with fresh eyes, and see for the first time that the pilot at the controls in the image below is in fact none other than our man himself – Jo Hammerborg!

Jo Hammerborg Pilot and Skydiver