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About the Item
Based upon a design from the late 1920s this PH 3/2 desk lamp was relaunched by Louis Poulsen in Denmark in 1999. This particular table lamp is from that series. It features a 3-tiered shading system in white opaline glass and base, rod and details in high-polish chrome-plating.
Measurements: H: 48 cm, Diameter: 28 cm (shade).
For the US. It will come installed with a 110 watt adaptor plug ready for use.Creator: Poul Henningsen (Designer)Design: PH 3/2 Table LampPH Shade LampsDimensions: Height: 18.9 in (48 cm)Diameter: 11.03 in (28 cm)Power Source: Plug-inVoltage: 220-240vLampshade: IncludedStyle: Bauhaus (In the Style Of)Materials and Techniques: Chrome,Metal,Opaline GlassPlace of Origin: DenmarkPeriod: 1920-1929Date of Manufacture: 1990sCondition: GoodWear consistent with age and use. Wellkept, clean and working condition. One scratch to the base (last photo)..Seller Location: Esbjerg, DKReference Number: 1stDibs: LU1782239799132
PH 3/2 Table Lamp
Designed by Poul Henningsen
The PH 3/2 table lamp isnt just striking; its scientific and caring, too. A series of stacked concentric shades, initially made of metal or glass, helps evenly distribute reflected light while concealing the source at its center, creating diffuse illumination thats much gentler on the eyes than the harsh glare from a bare light bulb, which, in the early days of electric lighting, was an off-putting evolution from the welcoming glow of gas lamps.
Designed by Poul Henningsen (18941967) in the late-1920s as part of a series that would include around 100 designs, the PH 3/2 table lamp can be traced all the way back to its creators humble boyhood.
Henningsen was a product of his time. The son of famous Danish writer Agnes Henningsen, the designer and architect grew up at the turn of the century in a small Danish town without electricity, and the soft glow of the gas lights of his childhood left an impression. Henningsen would go on to work in a variety of fields, but as a lighting designer, he sought to emulate the effect of gas-lamp lighting with the then-new electric fixtures of the era. After studying at the Danish College of Technology, Henningsen began designing restaurants, residences and factories in Copenhagen. In 1924, he joined Danish lighting firm Louis Poulsen Co., where he conducted a series of studies analyzing a lampshades function.
The modern and wildly nontraditional PH lamp design that resulted from Henningsens exploration would characterize his subsequent collection of artful lighting, such as the 3/2 table lamp, which ultimately suits different spaces and functions in its wealth of variations. His Paris light an early PH configuration he would refine later earned him a gold medal for modern lighting at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in France (this was the exhibition that brought the Art Deco style to worldwide attention). Louis Poulsen put the PH lamps into production soon afterward, and a long and fruitful collaboration began. In 1958, the partnership yielded another modern-day classic, the dramatic and revolutionary Artichoke lamp.
Today, the PH 3/2 table lamp is still available from Louis Poulsen.
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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.
Henningsens 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 Decratifs 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 Henningsens 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 Henningsens 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.
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