Poul Henningsen 'PH 4½-4' Glass Pendant for Louis Poulsen

About the Item

Poul Henningsen 'PH 4½-4' glass pendant for Louis Poulsen. Poul Henningsen designed the three-shade system back in 1925-1926. The first lights using the system were designed by PH in cooperation with Louis Poulsen for an exhibition in Paris. This partnership continued up until his death in 1967. Throughout his life, PH sought to create glare-free light, direct light where it was most needed, and create soft shadows, using incandescent bulbs as a light source. The PH 4½-4 Glass Pendant is a member of the three-shade family which numbers 30 lights today, including three for outdoor use. Thus PH did not just design a light, but an entire system – around a thousand different models have been produced over the years. This wide selection consisted of table, floor and wall lamps, as well as a number of different chandeliers, which were very popular in the 30s for lighting private homes from high ceilings. There were countless combination options. The lights were available in different colours, as well as a range of sizes. The first shades were made of metal with a painted underside, such as white, gold or silver – depending on whether diffuse, warm or cold light was desired. Glass was later introduced for the three-shade system. In addition to the downward-directed light, glass lamps illuminated the room. PH was the first person to pursue a scientific approach to light and use the logarithmic spiral as a basis. By using a design based on the logarithmic spiral he achieved even distribution of light over the entire curve of the shade. This even light distribution, together with the diffuse reflection through the glass, made it possible to control glare and shadow. Each shade reduces the amount of light equally, due to their distance from the light source. The PH light model numbers refer to the shade size. Each top shade had a corresponding set of middle and lower shades. In the ‘pure’ models, such as the 2/2, the top shade has a size of about 20 cm, with corresponding lower shades. The PH 4½-4 Glass Pendant consists of an approximately 45 cm top shade, but uses lower shades from the 4/4 model. These ‘hybrid’ models were introduced due to the desire to hang the pendants at lower heights. The system was also used for wall, table and floor lamps. The 4½-4 Pendant in its current form was introduced in 1980.

Creator:
Poul Henningsen (Designer)
Design:
PH 4 1/2 - 4 PendantPH Shade Lamps
Dimensions:
Height: 16.15 in (41 cm)Width: 17.72 in (45 cm)Depth: 17.72 in (45 cm)
Style:
Scandinavian Modern (In the Style Of)
Materials and Techniques:
Chrome,Opaline Glass
Place of Origin:
Denmark
Period:
21st Century
Date of Manufacture:
2022
Production Type:
New & Custom(Current Production)
Estimated Production Time:
7-8 weeks
Condition:
Seller Location:
Tilburg, NL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU5892231289312
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Poul Henningsen

The name Poul Henningsen is synonymous with the best and most innovative modern Scandinavian lamps and other lighting. The Danish designer created a signature vocabulary of fixtures with tiered and layered shades in sculptural arrangements that are at once naturalistic and geometric.

Henningsen grew up in a town on the outskirts of Copenhagen and studied architecture at the Technical University of Denmark. He would become a noted art critic, journalist and screenwriter, but his first love was lighting design.

Henningsen’s childhood home was illuminated by oil lamps. When his family switched to electrified lighting, he was alarmed and repelled by the harsh glare cast by an incandescent bulb, and in his late teens he began conducting quasi-scientific experiments to measure which materials and methods best diffused or reflected light to give it a warm brightness. His work came to the attention of the lighting-fixtures firm Louis Poulsen, which sponsored the development of a prototype lamp. The design won a gold medal at the 1925 Paris Expositions Internationales des Arts Decóratifs et Industriels Modernes — from which the term Art Deco derives. The lamp, whose three-part shade is said to be inspired by the arrangement of a dinner plate atop a soup bowl atop a teacup, became the basis for Henningsen’s most successful design, the PH 4/3 desk lamp.

All told, Henningsen would design some 100 lighting fixtures in his career. Some of his most notable creations are hanging lamps, which include the Septima (1929), a pendant composed of seven graduated frosted-glass layers; the Spiral (1942), made of a single ribbon of enameled aluminum; and the Artichoke lamp (1958), whose 70 glass or metal fins in a staggered and graduated arrangement on a central steel frame resemble those of its namesake. The last is likely Henningsen’s masterwork and an icon of mid-20th-century design. Like all Henningsen lighting designs, it is striking, sculptural and — thanks to his insistence on the primacy of the quality of the light cast — superbly functional.

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