3 Leg Table Lamp

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.

The Bauhaus was a progressive German art and design school founded by the architect Walter Gropius that operated from 1919 to 1933. Authentic Bauhaus furniture — sofas, dining chairs, tables and more — and the school’s followers married industrial and natural materials in simple, geometric forms. The goal of the Bauhaus was to erase the distinction between art and craft while embracing the use of new technologies and materials.

ORIGINS OF BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGN

• Art and design school established in Germany in 1919
• Promotion of a union of art, craft and technology
• Design intended for mass production
• School’s workshops focused on cabinetry, metalworking, typography, textiles and more
• Informed by De Stijl, Constructivism, Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, and modernism; influenced mid-century modernism, Scandinavian modernism

CHARACTERISTICS OF BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGN

• Emphasis on craft
• Simplicity, order, clarity and a prioritization of functionalism
• Incorporation of geometric shapes
• Minimalist and refined, little to no ornamentation
• Use of industrial materials such as tubular chrome, steel and plastic as well as leather, cane and molded plywood in furniture and other products

BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGNERS YOU SHOULD KNOW

• László Moholy-Nagy
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• Anni Albers
• Josef Hoffmann
• Marcel Breuer
• Marianne Brandt

AUTHENTIC BAUHAUS FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

The name Bauhaus is derived from the German verb bauen, “to build.” Under the school’s innovative curriculum, students were taught the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture, as well as practical skills like carpentry and metalworking. 

The school moved from Weimar in 1925 to the city of Dessau, where it enjoyed its heyday under Gropius, then Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The period from 1932 to 1933 when it operated in Berlin under Mies was its final chapter. Despite its brief existence, the Bauhaus has had an enduring impact on art and design in the United States and elsewhere, and is regarded by many as the 20th century’s chief crucible of modernism. 

The faculty roster at the Bauhaus reads like a who’s who of modernist creative genius — it included such artists as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy along with architects and designers like Mies and Marcel Breuer, who became known for his muscular brutalist-style concrete buildings in the postwar years. In 1925, while he was head of the Bauhaus carpentry workshop, Breuer gave form to his signature innovation: the use of lightweight tubular-steel frames for chairs, side tables and sofas — a technique soon adopted by Mies and others. Breuer’s Cesca chair was the first-ever tubular steel frame chair with a caned seat to be mass produced, while the inspiration for his legendary Wassily chair, a timeless design and part of the collection crafted to furnish the Dessau school, was the bike he rode around campus.

Bauhaus design style reflects the tenets by which these creators worked: simplicity, clarity and function. They disdained superfluous ornament in favor of precise construction. Seating pieces such as side chairs, armchairs or club chairs for example, were made with tubular metal or molded plywood frames, and upholstery was made from leather or cane. Above all, designs in the Bauhaus style offer aesthetic flexibility. They can be the elements of a wholly spare, minimalist space, the quiet foundation of an environment in which color and pattern come from one’s own collection of art and artifacts.

Today, from textiles to typefaces, architecture, furniture and decorative objects for the home, Bauhaus creations continue to have an outsize influence on modern design.

Find a collection of authentic Bauhaus furniture on 1stDibs.

The right vintage, new or antique tables can help make any space in your home stand out.

Over the years, the variety of tables available to us, as well as our specific needs for said tables, has broadened. Today, with all manner of these must-have furnishings differing in shape, material and style, any dining room table can shine just as brightly as the guests who gather around it.

Remember, when shopping for a dining table, it must fit your dining area, and you need to account for space around the table too — think outside the box, as an oval dining table may work for tighter spaces. Alternatively, if you’ve got the room, a Regency-style dining table can elevate any formal occasion at mealtime.

Innovative furniture makers and designers have also redefined what a table can be. Whether it’s an unconventional Ping-Pong table, a brass side table to display your treasured collectibles or a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk to add an air of nostalgia to your loft, your table can say a lot about you.

The visionary work of French designer Xavier Lavergne, for example, includes tables that draw on the forms of celestial bodies as often as they do aquatic creatures or fossils. Elsewhere, Italian architect Gae Aulenti, who looked to Roman architecture in crafting her stately Jumbo coffee table, created clever glass-topped mobile coffee tables that move on bicycle tires or sculpted wood wheels for Fontana Arte. 

Coffee and cocktail tables can serve as a room’s centerpiece with attention-grabbing details and colors. Glass varieties will keep your hardwood flooring and dazzling area rugs on display, while a marble or stone coffee table in a modern interior can showcase your prized art books and decorative objects. A unique vintage desk or writing table can bring sophistication and even a bit of spice to your work life. 

No matter your desired form or function, a quality table for your living space is a sound investment. On 1stDibs, browse a collection of vintage, new and antique bedside tables, mid-century end tables and more .