good light
& GOOD LIFE
Poul Henningsen – the lighting pio-
neer and enlightened genius
who helped shape contempo-
rary Denmark and ‘the Scan-
dinavian Model’
By Hans Hertel
Vain mother and young
inventor
Poul Henningsen (1894–1967) – per-
haps better known as PH – was an architect
and much, much more. He loved to relate how the story
of his famous PH lamp began. The first seed of an idea
began to germinate in 1907 when, aged 13, he moved
with his family from the small town of Roskilde, where
kerosene lamps were still used for lighting, to the me-
tropolis of Copenhagen, where the revolutionary electric
illumination had already arrived.
The transfer from malodorous gas and kerosene lamps
to electric incandescent lamps was a giant leap forward
from the perspectives of both civilisation and hygiene,
and Edison’s first carbon filament light bulb produced
truly beautiful light. However, the subsequent spiral
light bulbs – bare or with opalised, milky glass – sprayed
light out over rooms, streets and people at the cost of
the quality of the light. PH’s mother was very vain, he
related, explaining that “she maintained strict control of
the lighting to ensure she stayed sufficiently pretty ...
the lighting level had to be soft and pleasing”. For this
reason, the young Poul Henningsen took it upon himself
to eliminate the glare from all the lamps in the house.
PH was what could best be described as a Jack-of-all-
trades. He was a multi-talented artist: architect, inven-
tor, designer, songwriter, lyricist and film-maker. He was
also an art and architecture critic, before becoming a
general culture critic and debate contributor – and finally
a kind of popular pedagogue. The various sides of his
character cross-pollinated one another, but practice took
precedence over theory.
PH was a child of the famous ‘free love’ of the 1890s.
His mother, the author Agnes Henningsen, gave birth to
him outside of wedlock and his father was a Copenha-
gen journalist and bohemian. He was placed in care with
a joiner and his family who lived in a provincial town,
and on his third birthday, his adoptive family presented
him with a planing bench. This was a very perspective
gift from the joiner, because pure skill and a tactile rela-
tionship to materials and tools played a key role in PH’s
creativity from the very start.
“My creative life was centred on the technical,” he said,
and referred to himself as a joiner, mason and mechanic.
As a boy, he built model aeroplanes, trolleys and kites,
and at the age of 17 he was awarded a grant for having
invented a ‘self-pumping bicycle’. From 1919 onwards,
he concentrated on lamps. To start with, he focused on
prism chandeliers and ruby shades intended to make
his mother prettier, but he gradually started to work on
more general lighting issues.
Applied art and the beauty of light
Poul Henningsen was apprenticed to a mason and took
courses in construction theory and mathematics. How-
ever, he was actually an autodidact. From 1919 he
worked on the construction of residences, and in 1921
he became an architectural staff writer for the Danish
newspaper Politiken – the first in the Nordic region. His
construction page was devoted to buildings and applied
art, traffic, urban and rural planning, and everyday ob-
jects from the city environment: everything from adver-
tising columns and newsstands to telephone boxes and
street lights. Behind it all lay a new social concept of
architecture which states that architecture is applied art
intended to build societies and improve conditions for
people’s lives in light and air, freedom and equality. De-
sign is defined by function, and it is preferable to build
in contemporary style – not in the stylised architecture of
faux ‘empire’ grandeur.
PH also wrote about light and sought what he termed a
natural science solution: “light that showcases beautiful
things in the best possible way – beautiful shapes, beau-
tiful colours, beautiful fabrics”, as he wrote in 1924. The
challenge was to shade and redirect the light to make
it a practical, decorative and a contrasting element. This
was the issue he worked on in primitive light workshops
that he set up in his houses. In 1921, he drew a multi-
shade ‘snowball’ pendant for a cubist dining room in
Aalborg, and one of his outdoor lamps was installed in
Copenhagen.
Giant leap and white birds
DPH achieved his first giant leap in 1925 when he cre-
ated new types of lamp for an international industrial art
exhibition in Paris: the Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which gave its name
to the elegant Art Déco style. One of the criteria for the
exhibition was a complete prohibition on copying; every-
thing had to be shaped on the basis of modern ideals of
beauty. PH’s six table lamps and pendants – presented in
ten versions including a giant spherical chandelier – won
six gold medals. They revitalised shape, anti-glare, light-
ing control and light economy, and they aligned with PH’s
ideal: to design everyday items so that they could be de-
mocratised in machine-based standardisation. However,
the models were expensive to make.
PH’s next giant leap came in autumn of the same year,
when he took a radical step and developed the distinc-
tive PH lamp with three shades. In the same way as the
Parisian lamp, it was made by Louis Poulsen & Co. – his
partner since 1924 – and it was something of a com-
mercial scoop when in the winter of 1926, the company
bested two German competitors to win the contract for
lighting an international car exhibition at Forum, the new
exhibition centre in Copenhagen. The company quickly
produced 120 of the new lamps, and when they were
suspended from the ceiling in Forum, one newspaper
wrote: “The white birds flew through the giant hall”.
The birds were soon also flying in thousands of homes,
restaurants, offices and institutions. In just the first year,
12,000 lamps were sold in Denmark, and suspended
and standing versions were made by the Deutsche PH-
Lampenfabrik in Karlsruhe, Germany, and marketed in
numerous countries, in parallel with new branded goods
including furniture, gramophones, typewriters and cars.
In 1929, the lamp was installed at Cologne Railway Sta-
tion, while a campaign in the Danish press prevented
‘these modern horrors’ being purchased for Copenhagen
Central Station.
Spiral pattern and brand
With the three-shade model – plate, bowl and cup, as
he himself described it – PH had arrived at a simple con-
cept: warm, glare-free, uniform light with soft shadows
in a neat compromise between enclosure, utilisation of
the sensory quality of the light, and aesthetic beauty.
In the wake of the Paris exhibition, he proudly referred
to himself as a ‘master lighter’ and later as a ‘lampist’.
Over the next 40 years, he developed versions of the
‘PH system’ for standing lights, table lights, pendants
and ceiling lights in opalised glass, copper and bronze,
painted and coloured – in shade, chandelier, ball, spiral
and plate shapes. As well as tennis, dentist’s, operating
theatre, restaurant and street lamps.
The PH lamp followed the clearly defined shapes of cub-
ism and the geometric curves of the lamp itself: the
logarithmic spiral became an archetypal pattern in PH’s
design. He was unabashedly committed to becoming a
brand. The success of his lamps made his initials – PH – a
trademark that he also wrote in giant letters on his kites
and at exhibitions.
The PH ‘brand’ was reinforced by his controversial journal
entitled Kritisk Revy. Over a period of three years from
1926 through 1928, it grew to be known and feared
for its fight to renew culture in the context of building,
homes and other areas. It was feared by older architects
on account of its insubordinate impartiality – and revered
by young architects throughout Scandinavia, including
the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.
Josephine Baker and Scandinavian Modern
PH’s reputation as the brash rebel grew in 1928, when
Josephine Baker, appearing as a guest performer in Co-
penhagen, was attacked by misogynist and racist ‘guard-
ians of morality’. PH was quick to defend her ‘naked
naturalness’, and she taught him something new about
the body and rhythm. From 1929 onwards, he became a
renewer of revue art by creating a socially critical opin-
ion revue, as well as a new form of ballad based on the
spoken language and jazz rhythms.
In his perspectives on architecture and design, PH was a
sceptical modernist. He was critical of exterior formalism
in much of the ultra-modern style of the time, but there
are key similarities between his work and Bauhaus, the
Dutch ‘De Stijl’ and the work of the French architect Le
Corbusier. His ideal centred on simple, functional shapes
in materials suitable for batch production.
He also encountered this style at the Stockholm exhibi-
tion in 1930, which coined the concept of functionalism,
more commonly known internationally as Scandinavian
Modern. PH lauded the new types of residence and fur-
niture showcased at the exhibition, the elegant and cool
moderation, the new values of beauty in steel, glass and
cement, and in the use of the light.
Functionalism and ‘The Modern’
PH viewed functionalism and cubism as the style of the
age, impartial and classless, and he expanded this into
a broad socio-political programme. In ‘The Modern’, de-
mocracy, critical humanism, internationalism and new
shape were different sides of the same coin. He neatly
termed this democracy’s light summer programme, and
it also encompassed female emancipation and – most
controversially of all – an honest sexual morality for
young people.
He believed that the new art forms of the age exerted
indirect political influence by “changing mentality in a
modern direction” , and in 1934 he wrote that the “most
important cultural results” of democracy are “function-
alism, jazz, dance, outdoor living and the passion that
flows inevitably from it”. That flows inevitably from it –
how very picturesque! How very provocative.
The Modern programme was diametrically opposed to
reaction and reactionary ideals in any shape or form –
particularly the type that came sneaking up from Nazi
Germany in 1933, infecting the Danish people with iras-
cible nationalism. PH collided head-on with this move-
ment in 1935, when he made his film about Denmark for
the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The film presents a
poetic image of the modern, hard-working country, but
it was attacked for being ‘unpatriotic’ – and for its jazz
soundtrack, which the critics contemptuously referred to
as ‘black man’s music’. PH tirelessly promoted a cultural
battle against Nazism and in favour of the freedom of
expression that was being undermined by the threats
from Germany.
Icon and safety net
“He who seeks coherence must diversify,” wrote PH in
1932, and over the next 30 years he made diversification
an art form. One part of him wrote articles and edited
journals. Another composed revue ballads and made
films. A third designed factories and houses, furniture
made of steel tubing and a famous glass piano. A fourth
spoke at lectures and debates all over Denmark. A fifth
devoted itself to creating new lamp models.
In 1935 he introduced the Globe, in 1942 the Tivoli and
Spiral lamp, and the post-war years were distinguished
by a chain of new initiatives: the Louvre in 1957; the
Snowball, the floating Artichoke and the simple, highly
popular A5 in 1958; the Contrast lamp in 1962; and the
elegant Spiral lamp in 1964.
Today, the PH lamp is an icon that is on display in design
museums from New York to Tokyo, but it also took on
financial significance as a safety net for PH. When, as an
anti-Nazi, he was forced to flee to Sweden in 1943, he
supported himself by producing a version of the lamp
with a pleated paper shade and selling it through the Co-
operation. For 42 years, Louis Poulsen & Co. was both his
creative environment and a base that made him inde-
pendent of media, authorities and organisations when
he baited public opinion.
From a stylistic perspective, too, it is possible to deter-
mine a consistent theme. The logarithmic spiral of the
PH lamp is repeated in his snail-shapes and spirals –
from the circular movements of the camera around the
towers of Copenhagen in Danmarksfilmen to his snake
chairs, spiral staircases and lamps. The spiral symbolises
dynamism: his belief in progress and his dream of the
creative community.
PH was a cross between a socialist, a liberal individualist
and quasi-anarchist. He was bitterly opposed to ‘the en-
emies of life’ as he called them, i.e. everything that binds
our mouths and hands: prejudice, habitual thinking, in-
tolerance and hypocrisy. His mantra was: the individual
before parties, organisations, religions and authorities.
The individual before the state. With his clarity and his
courage, his perseverance and his insubordinate impact,
he played a key role in shaping contemporary Denmark
and ‘the Scandinavian Model’ – as a style as well. He
demanded quality for the framework that surrounds our
lives – and the light in which we view it. Neon light was
one of ‘the enemies of life’. In the Louis Poulsen maga-
zine, which he edited for 25 years, he railed against the
plague of the fluorescent light – the garish light that only
serves for plastic colours, paints people’s faces the bluish
white hue of skimmed milk, and which is only good for
“cases where ladies want to have unsightly hair growth
removed” in his opinion. In this context, he anticipated
the halogen lamps and energy-saving bulbs of our mod-
ern age.
A core concept of PH’s lighting philosophy is that lighting
culture is both art and design for living. Light is subju-
gated to physiological laws; it generates well-being, a
spatial and sensory experience, irrespective of whether
we are eating, making love, working, playing sport, tak-
ing lessons or looking at art.
Above all, PH was an artist. His works of genius are the
journal Kritisk Revy, his esteemed Danmarksfilmen, his
renewal of the revue – and, first and foremost, the PH
Lamp. During his twilight years, his cultural criticism
became shaded by cultural pessimism. He feared that
‘industrial dictatorship’, consumerism, advertising and
mass media pop would brainwash us into petty bour-
geois conformism. He even compared this – somewhat
drastically – to the servitude of Nazism.
As an artist, however, he kept on working to the end,
playing with kites and words and fixtures – the models
that can still be adapted to new settings all over the
world.
Spirit and light
The quality of the light – and the constancy of the light,
we may add, because an historical perspective applies.
The classics speak to each other across the centuries.
In 1926, Otto Gelsted – and author friend of PH – wrote
an ode to the PH lamp. It lauds ‘the shining logic of the
lamp’ where ‘Of light and soul the pact / Re-enacts’.
Several years later, Otto Gelsted sent his friend two lines
written by the Lyricist Thøger Larsen, which he recalled
as: “It was the same sunshine, / that Isaac Newton saw.”
The beauty of these lines is not just the rhythm and
the letter rhyme, but also the vision. I see two images:
1667, Trinity College Cambridge – the eminent physicist
Newton discovers that white light is composed of all the
colours in the spectrum. 1925 – PH is working with a
candle and a piece of paper in the black-painted attic in
his terraced house – and arrives at his illuminating logic.
It is no coincidence that the enlightenment movement
of the 1700s is named after the concept of physical light
in many major languages: Enlightenment in English, illu-
minismo in Italian, Aufklärung in German, la Illustracíon
in Spanish, and les lumières in French. PH the light-mak-
er was a man of the Enlightenment, inextricably bound
to its fundamental values: scientific reason, freedom of
belief and expression, human rights, and humanistic tol-
erance. Particularly when following his shining path and
his vision: good light as a part of good life.
& QUALITYfreedom
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