PH 1/1 Centenary Edition: One Small Shade, Three Archive Lamps

Louis Poulsen has returned to its own archive for the PH centenary, and the three lamps it has drawn out share one detail: the smallest complete shade set Poul Henningsen ever made. This piece follows that PH 1/1 shade from a 1930s chandelier to a piano lamp and a rechargeable table light, and explains what each reissue keeps from the original drawings.

A shade system, not a single lamp

Henningsen did not design one lamp so much as a set of rules. His three-shade system, launched in 1926 after the PH lamp won a gold medal at the Paris exhibition of 1925, places a top, middle and bottom shade around the bulb so that no line of sight reaches the source. Light hits the inside of one shade, reflects onto the next, and leaves the fixture spread downwards and outwards without glare. The proportions between the shades follow his golden 3:2:1 ratio.

Because the system was built on proportion, it could be scaled. Louis Poulsen produced the shades in a ladder of sizes, and the numbers in a PH name refer to them: the first figure for the top shade, the second for the lower shades. A PH 1/1 is the bottom rung. Its top shade measures roughly 10 cm across, which makes it the smallest set that is still a whole PH lamp rather than a fragment of one. Our explainer on how the PH three shade system works and what the numbers mean covers the full ladder.

That small size is the thread running through the centenary reissues. Rather than inventing new forms, Louis Poulsen looked for designs in its back catalogue where the PH 1/1 set already did the work, and rebuilt them.

The Bombardement chandelier returns

The most striking of the three is the PH 1/1 Chandelier Centenary Edition. It revives a chandelier that sat in the Louis Poulsen catalogue from 1933 until the mid-1960s and was known by the nickname “Bombardement”. Each arm carries its own complete PH 1/1 set, so the fixture reads as a cluster of small PH lamps gathered around a central body, not as one large shade.

The reissue is made in materials chosen to look settled from the first day. Suspension and body are bronzed, aged brass, lacquered to hold the patina, with fine hairlines left in the surface. The shades are mouth-blown, four-layered opal glass in a dusty terracotta tone, sandblasted matt white on the inside so the reflected light stays soft. Louis Poulsen has released it in strictly limited numbered editions, each piece engraved in gold: 1000 of the three-arm version and 400 of the six-arm, with a nine-arm edition of 200 completing the series.

In practical terms, the three-arm chandelier measures 527 x 344 x 527 mm and weighs 9.0 kg. The six-arm version widens to 606 mm at the same 344 mm height and weighs 15.0 kg. Each arm takes an E14 bulb of up to 20 W. A fixture of this character wants a room it can preside over: a dining table, an entrance hall, or the centre of a living room. Because every shade works by reflection, the light stays low enough for an evening meal while still filling the space.

The Piano Lamp, scaled for the table

Henningsen drew the first PH Piano Lamp in 1931 for people who read music. Its curved, movable stem carries the shade out over the keyboard, balanced by a globular counterweight at the back, and the head tilts 45° backward and 25° forward so the light lands on the score rather than in the player’s eyes. It belongs to the same family of curved stems as his Question Mark and Luna designs.

The PH 1/1 Piano Table Lamp keeps that mechanism intact and reduces it to table-lamp size, which is where the PH 1/1 shade comes in. The shade uses the same four-layered, mouth-blown dusty terracotta glass as the chandelier, with a white inner side and a frosted diffuser underneath, so the colour reads warm from across the room while the light below stays gentle. Frame, arm and counterweight are brushed brass, aged and clear-lacquered, and Henningsen’s initials are engraved on the switch housing.

It measures 417 mm across and 364 mm high on a Ø153 mm base, with 2.6 m of dark brown textile cord and a switch on the lamp itself. It takes a single G9 bulb of up to 20 W. Since the glass is blown by mouth, each shade varies slightly from the next. On a piano it does the job it was drawn for; on a desk, a bedside table or a deep windowsill, the tilting head is just as useful for reading.

The same shade without a cord

The third piece takes the PH 1/1 set somewhere Henningsen never had the technology to go. The PH 1/1 Portable Lamp puts the smallest whole shade set on a machined brass base, finished either in high-lustre chrome plating or brass metallised, and runs it from a rechargeable battery.

Here the shades are mouth-blown white opal glass rather than terracotta, which gives the lamp a cooler, more classic PH look. Inside sits a 2.5 W Dim-to-Warm LED that moves from 1800 K to 2700 K as it brightens, with both stepless and four-step dimming. A full charge gives roughly five hours at maximum output, and it charges over USB-C. Rated IP44, it can move from the dinner table to a balcony on a warm evening.

At 160 x 291 x 160 mm and 1.8 kg, it is the most compact way to own a PH lamp. It fits on a bookshelf or a bedside ledge without crowding it, and because the layered shades are so recognisable, it reads as Henningsen’s work even when switched off.

Reading the three side by side

Seen together, the reissues show how much of Henningsen’s thinking lived in the shade itself. The same small set works as one of several lights on a hanging fixture, as a directed reading light on a balanced arm, and as a free-standing lamp you can carry from room to room.

• PH 1/1 Chandelier Centenary Edition: archive design in the catalogue from 1933 to the mid-1960s; terracotta opal glass on bronzed, aged brass; numbered limited editions.
• PH 1/1 Piano Table Lamp: based on the 1931 Piano Lamp; terracotta glass on brushed, aged brass; tilting head for directed light.
• PH 1/1 Portable Lamp: white opal glass on chrome or brass metallised; rechargeable LED; IP44 for indoor and outdoor use.

The terracotta glass on the chandelier and the piano lamp links them as a pair, which suits a home that wants one piece over the table and another on a desk nearby. The portable sits apart in colour but shares the proportions, so it pairs comfortably with larger white PH pendants and table lamps already in a room. To place these alongside the rest of Henningsen’s work and the wider catalogue, see the full Louis Poulsen collection.