Brand Stories: Louis Poulsen
Louis Poulsen was founded in Copenhagen in 1874 by Ludvig R. Poulsen. The company originally started as a wine importer, then moved through a few other lines of business before landing as an electrical supply company in the early 1920s.
The Turn Toward Light
That changed in 1924, when Danish architect Poul Henningsen partnered with the company to develop a lamp that could throw light without glare, using a set of curved, stacked shades that hid the bulb from view. The design won a gold medal at the 1925 Paris exhibition that gave Art Deco its name, and Louis Poulsen has been a lighting company ever since. Henningsen patented the system in 1928 and kept expanding on it for decades, producing close to a hundred lighting designs over his career, including the PH 5 in 1958 and the Artichoke, a 72-leaf pendant still hanging in the Copenhagen restaurant it was made for.
A Design Lineage
Henningsen set the direction, but the company built well beyond him. Arne Jacobsen designed the AJ lamp for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen in the late 1950s. Verner Panton brought the same instinct for soft, glare-free light into the mushroom-shaped Panthella in 1971. More recently, Gabriel Tan applied it to the Rumee, a cordless lamp built for a table or a shelf rather than a ceiling. Each designer worked in a different decade and a different form, but all of them were solving the same problem Henningsen set out in 1924.
Designing for the Future
Louis Poulsen still runs its whole catalog through the same design office in Copenhagen, and the recent additions stay close to the original engineering while adapting to changing technology. The PH 2/1 Portable takes Henningsen's three-shade system and puts it on a rechargeable base. The Panthella and other styles now come in portable version for the same reason: people want the shape and the light quality without needing outlets and rechargeable battery technology now makes that possible.
In 2024, the company marked it's 150 anniversary and used it to look forward as much as back. Alongside and archival book tracing the full history, Louis Poulsen continues to commission work from designers actively shaping the field today. A company built around a fix for a glaring light bulb is now three generations of designers deep, and still evolving.
The Real Thing
Search for a Panthella, PH 5, or an Artichoke online and you will find dozens of imitations. Louis Poulsen remains the only manufacturer with the rights to produce the authentic designs, working from Henningsen's original calculations.
When you buy a Louis Poulsen lamp from Ökenhem, you are getting the lamp Henningsen, Jacobsen, & Panton, actually designed, built by the company with the rights and the records to build it correctly.
Shop the full Louis Poulsen collection HERE.
