Fog Morup Torch

Fog & Mørup was a legendary Danish lighting manufacturer best known to collectors for the sleek and sculptural ceiling lights, wall lights and floor lamps that the company produced in the postwar years. Its vintage fixtures are ideal for design enthusiasts looking to introduce a splash of Scandinavian modernist ingenuity into a space.

Founders Ansgar Fog and Erik Mørup reportedly met in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1902. They became fast friends and discussed going into business together. An opportunity materialized a couple of years later when they discovered a newspaper advertisement — an Aarhus consignment warehouse had been vacated and its landowner was looking for a business to sign a new lease. The friends took a chance and established a wholesale metalwork business.

In 1906, Fog and Mørup moved the business to Copenhagen and focused on lighting. They purchased an electrical company in 1913 and opened a lighting factory shortly thereafter. The following two decades saw rapid expansion. One of the most notable Fog & Mørup designs from the interwar period was the brass Kongelys table lamp, created by Niels Rasmussen Thykier.

Johannes (Jo) Hammerborg, an alum of leading Danish silverware brand Georg Jensen, joined Fog & Mørup as head of design in the late 1950s, ushering in a period of commercial success and international prominence.

Hammerborg was an innovative designer whose sleek and streamlined aesthetic came to define the company. During his time with Fog & Mørup, Hammerborg designed over 60 lighting fixtures and collaborated with other designers such as Erik Balslev, Sophus Frandsen and more. Fog & Mørup also worked with designers Torsten Thorup and Claus Bonderup, who created the iconic trumpet-shaped Semi pendant light in 1967.

Fog & Mørup sales remained healthy into the 1970s. A merger followed in the ensuing decades and the brand definitively closed in 2005 after being acquired by Nordlux.

Find vintage Fog & Mørup lighting on 1stDibs.

Well-crafted antique and vintage table lamps do more than provide light; the right fixture-and-table combination can add a focal point or creative element to any interior.

Proper table lamps have long been used for lighting our most intimate spaces. Perfect for lighting your nightstand or reading nook, table lamps play an integral role in styling an inviting room. In the years before electricity, lamps used oil. Today, a rewired 19th-century vintage lamp can still provide a touch of elegance for a study.

After industrial milestones such as mass production took hold in the Victorian era, various design movements sought to bring craftsmanship and innovation back to this indispensable household item. Lighting designers affiliated with Art Deco, which originated in the glamorous roaring ’20s, sought to celebrate modern life by fusing modern metals with dark woods and dazzling colors in the fixtures of the era. The geometric shapes and gilded details of vintage Art Deco table lamps provide an air of luxury and sophistication that never goes out of style.

After launching in 1934, Anglepoise lamps soon became a favorite among modernist architects and designers, who interpreted the fixture as “a machine for lighting,” just as Le Corbusier had reimagined the house as “a machine for living in.” The popular task light owed to a collaboration between a vehicle-suspension engineer by the name of George Carwardine and a West Midlands springs manufacturer, Herbert Terry & Sons. 

Some mid-century modern table lamps, particularly those created by the likes of Joe Colombo and the legendary lighting artisans at Fontana Arte, bear all the provocative hallmarks associated with Space Age design. Sculptural and versatile, the Louis Poulsen table lamps of that period were revolutionary for their time and still seem innovative today. 

If you are looking for something more contemporary, industrial table lamps are demonstrative of a newly chic style that isn’t afraid to pay homage to the past. They look particularly at home in any rustic loft space amid exposed brick and steel beams.

Before you buy a desk lamp or table lamp for your living room, consider your lighting needs. The Snoopy lamp, designed in 1967, or any other “banker’s lamp” (shorthand for the Emeralite desk lamps patented by H.G. McFaddin and Company), provides light at a downward angle that is perfect for writing, while the Fontana table lamp and the beloved Grasshopper lamp by Greta Magnusson-Grossman each yield a soft and even glow. Some table lamps require lampshades to be bought separately.

Whether it’s a classic antique Tiffany table lamp, a Murano glass table lamp or even a bold avant-garde fixture custom-made by a contemporary design firm, the right table lamp can completely transform a room. Find the right one for you on 1stDibs.