PH Artichoke: 72 Leaves and a Copenhagen Restaurant

Why does a pendant assembled from dozens of metal leaves give off no glare at all? The PH Artichoke answers that with geometry rather than ornament, and the geometry was worked out for one particular Copenhagen dining room in 1958. What follows is where the design came from, how the leaves do their work, and what changes when the same form is made in glass.

A ceiling for the Langelinie Pavilion

Poul Henningsen designed the PH Artichoke Pendant Lamp for Louis Poulsen in 1958, as the light for the Langelinie Pavilion restaurant in Copenhagen. The original fixtures still hang there. For a commission of that age that is worth pausing on, because it means the design has never needed replacing by something that works better in the same room.

The problem it had to solve was harder than it looks. A restaurant ceiling is read from every seat in the house: from directly below, from across the floor, from a table on the far side, from the stairs. A shade that conceals its light source from one direction will give it away from another, and a guest looking up at a bare bulb is a guest squinting through dinner. Henningsen had spent three decades by then refining shade systems that put layers of material between the eye and the source. The Artichoke is that thinking pushed to its limit: a shade with no single viewing angle at all.

Seventy-two leaves in twelve rows

The fixture carries 72 leaves, set in 12 rows of six. Each row is turned relative to the rows above and below, so the opening between two leaves in one layer sits directly behind a leaf in the next. Follow any straight line from an eye in the room to the socket at the centre and it meets metal before it meets the bulb. That is the whole trick, and it is a staggering rather than a covering: the leaves never close the form, which is why the Artichoke still reads as an open, layered object instead of a solid drum.

Light is not simply blocked, though. The inner side of every leaf is wet painted, and the light that leaves the fixture has bounced from leaf to leaf on the way out, softening as it goes and spilling both downwards onto the table and sideways into the room. A shade that only shielded would make a dark ceiling. This one lights the surfaces it hides behind.

The construction follows the same logic. The leaves are powder coated or satin polished steel, with brass, copper and stainless steel versions among them, and the frame that holds their angles fixed is high lustre chrome plated steel. The fixture hangs on 4 m of white textile cable with aluminium wires, and the canopy is included. Each one is put together by hand in Denmark, then signed and numbered.

The Septima came first

Henningsen had tried layered shades in glass long before 1958. The PH Septima Pendant, introduced in 1928, builds a crown from seven glass shades whose sandblasted and clear fields alternate from layer to layer. The sandblasted areas diffuse a soft ambient glow, the clear ones let crisp light through, and the stacking means the bulb stays out of sight while the fixture itself remains visually light. Production ended in 1940, when the materials it needed were no longer to be had, and for decades the design survived mainly in museum collections before Louis Poulsen returned it to the catalogue with each shade still finished by hand.

What did not disappear was the idea. The Septima measures 500 mm wide and 405 mm high and weighs 12.9 kg, with legs in brass metallised steel, a socket housing and canopy in satin polished untreated brass that takes on a patina over time, and a 3 m white fabric cord. It takes an E27 source up to 28 W. Thirty years separate it from the Artichoke, and the later design swaps glass for metal and seven shades for seventy-two, but the reasoning is continuous. If you want the longer story of that pendant on its own, we wrote about the seven shade glass pendant separately.

The same geometry, translated into glass

In 2008 the Artichoke went back to glass. The PH Artichoke Glass Pendant keeps the count and the arrangement, 72 leaves in 12 rows of six, but makes them in matte sandblasted glass, clear or yellow, held in a frame of high lustre chrome plated, laser cut brass. Louis Poulsen describes the layout as a picket fence, and that is a fair description of what you see: the leaves overlap without sealing, and light passes through them as well as around them.

The difference in the room is easy to state. The metal version is a sculptural silhouette that reads as a dark, precise object when the light is off and a glowing one when it is on. The glass version is milky and luminous in both states, lighter in expression, less of a mass overhead. Choose between them by what you want the ceiling to look like at four in the afternoon, not only at eight in the evening.

Weight is the practical catch. At 480 mm the metal Artichoke starts from 10.1 kg; the glass one at the same diameter is 24.0 kg. Go up the range and the gap widens, to 37.9 kg at 600 mm, 49.0 kg at 720 mm and 64.6 kg at 840 mm. Height differs too, because the glass leaves need more depth: 570 mm against 445 mm for metal at Ø 480. Both details are worth checking against your ceiling fixing before you commit to a size.

Four sizes, and where each one belongs

The range runs Ø 480, Ø 600, Ø 720 and Ø 840 mm in both materials. In metal the measurements are 480 x 445 x 480 mm from 10.1 kg, 600 x 580 x 600 mm from 14.2 kg, 720 x 650 x 720 mm from 12.4 kg and 840 x 720 x 840 mm from 12.7 kg, with the exact figure varying by finish and light source. The smallest is the one most homes can actually take: over a round table, in a stairwell, above a landing. The two largest are for double height rooms, where you look at the fixture from the side as often as from beneath and the layering pays for the space it takes.

Finishes change the character more than the size does. Copper and brass warm the reflected light and patinate; stainless steel keeps it neutral and mirror bright; white and black turn the fixture into drawing rather than metal. There are also dusty blue, dusty green and soft white leaves paired with brass metallised or high lustre chrome plated frames, for rooms where a full metal ceiling piece would be too much. Light source options run from a plain E27 socket to integrated LED at 2700K, 3000K and a dimmable 3000 to 1800K version, with the fixture rated IP20 for indoor use.

Give it clearance and give it a reason to be seen from below. That is the only real rule with this design: it was made for a room where people sit under it for hours, and it rewards being hung where its rows can be read. For other Henningsen pendants and the rest of the ceiling range, see the full pendant lamps collection.