PH Artichoke

In 1958, Poul Henningsen was commissioned to design a series of chandeliers for the Langelinie Pavilion, a restaurant on the coast of Copenhagen. Poul Henningsen and Louis Poulsen had begun their collaboration in 1925 when they presented the first lamp of what would become the PH collection at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Since then, they had continued to collaborate, with only one long interruption due to the outbreak of World War II.

With the 1958 commission, Poul Henningsen continued his exploration of what had been his lifelong design obsession: fighting the harsh direct light of electric bulbs. Henningsen had already designed a three-shade system to prevent glare, which he used in his PH5 Pendant and many other lighting projects (he designed more than 700).

This time, Henningsen decided to use a structure made of twelve structural arches around the light source. Attached to the arches are 72 trapezoidal metal plates in various materials such as brass, copper, steel, painted metal that can be manually adjusted.

The configuration prevents direct electric light from being visible from any angle, while the system of metal lamellae amplifies brightness through a system of reflections. Henningsen’s dream materializes in a pendant lamp that is both technical and poetic, opulent, aesthetic, and functional.