Table Lamp Ph 4/3 Designed by Poul Henningsen for Louis Poulsen

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Table Lamp Ph 4/3 Designed by Poul Henningsen for Louis Poulsen

About the Item

Poul Henningsen’s lamp designs are characterised by their innovative distribution of light. It was Henningsen’s continuous goal to achieve illumination that sheds warm, soft light without a harsh glare coming directly from the bulb. Henningsen developed his ’system of lamp shades that completely surround the source of light so that no radiating rays can meet the eye directly’. Designed in 1927, this PH 4/3 table lamp is stamped ‘pat appl’, designating it as one of the earliest examples to be produced. This stamp was only used on the PH 4/3 within the first two years of its design. From 1929, they were instead stamped ‘patented’. Henningsen’s famous lamps with a three-shade system range from small to large and are available in different types. The very early PH-shades were produced in white frosted glass, amber-coloured glass, or lacquered copper – the last two being the most desirable. The white shades were produced in milk glass in the 1920s and early 1930s but never produced again after that, as they were soon replaced by cased glass. The milk glass shades have a solid white colour, as opposed to cased glass, which consists of two or sometimes three different layers of glass. The shades in milk glass are undeniably more coveted. The lacquered copper shades should have their original paint, often with visible paint loss, especially around the metal screws placed on the lower shade. The PH-lamps were manufactured by the internationally renowned Danish lighting manufacturer Louis Poulsen, with whom Henningsen built a lifelong working relationship after presenting their famous Paris Lamp at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris (and winning the prize). Poul Henningsen (1894 - 1967) was a Danish author, critic, architect, and acclaimed designer. He is frequently referred to simply as ’PH’ and is most associated with his design of the PH-lamp series. Henningsen’s unique understanding of the relationship between light structures, shadows, glare, and colour reproduction is unparalleled in Scandinavian design history.

Creator:
Poul Henningsen (Designer)
Dimensions:
Height: 20.48 in (52 cm)Diameter: 15.95 in (40.5 cm)
Style:
Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Brass,Copper
Place of Origin:
Denmark
Period:
Mid-20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1927
Condition:
Seller Location:
Stockholm, SE
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1006633305492

Shop All Poul Henningsen

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.

Find a collection of authentic Poul Henningsen table lamps, floor lamps and other lighting on 1stDibs.