Our blog about Danish modern lighting and other midcentury design

The precursor to Bent Karlby's Pan series for Lyfa

modblog 22/04/2010 0

Most collectors of midcentury Danish lighting are aware of Bent Karlby's designs for Lyfa, which include several of the company's most sought-after pi...

Verner Panton and Poulsen's LamPetit

modblog 25/04/2010 0

Did Verner Panton design Louis Poulsen's versatile LamPetit? Certainly the compact little lamp is unexpected for its 1966 date, looking more like some...

The uniquely Danish concept of hygge

modblog 15/07/2010 0

From time to time we hear someone in Denmark describing a vintage light – usually one that gives out a warm glow, such as Claus Bolby's Veega (picture...

Fog & Mørup’s iF Product Design Awards

modblog 20/05/2010 0

Initiated in 1953, the International Forum (iF) Product Design Awards are presented annually to products deemed by its jury of international experts t...

The Louis Poulsen Bornholmpendel

modblog 03/06/2010 0

The Bornholmpendel is rarely seen today, but in 1967 it was chosen by Louis Poulsen to feature on the front cover of its product catalogue.The light w...

Fog & Mørup's 1970s collaboration with Arabia

modblog 03/07/2010 0

In the mid-1970s Fog & Mørup made a brief return to its roots in ironmongery when it embarked upon a collaboration with Finnish company Arabia which e...

Fog & Mørup lights in Brio miniatures

modblog 31/12/2010 0

In the early 1970s Swedish toy manufacturer Brio Scanditoy Mobilia produced miniature versions of some of the interior design classics of the day for ...

A tale of two Topans: the Pendant & the Spot

modblog 23/06/2011 0

Verner Panton’s futuristic 1959 Topan light design for Louis Poulsen has rarely been out of the limelight in its more than 50 years of existence. Freq...

The forgotten art of Oluf Gravesen

modblog 29/10/2010 0

Danish advertising for items of domestic design in the 1960s and 1970s often followed a very specific format. The featured product would be photograph...

Three of a kind

modblog 28/04/2010 0

Danish lighting companies Louis Poulsen, Lyfa and Nordisk Solar Compagni have all produced lamps with a very similar shape. The Poulsen version is inc...

Hvidt, Hvidt & Mølgaard's Safari

modblog 07/05/2010 0

Nordisk Solar Compagni’s Safari pendant light, pictured below, is often attributed to Jørgen Gammelgaard, but was in fact designed in the 1970s by eng...

Henningsen & Schwalbe’s Kassablanka

modblog 31/05/2010 0

Constructed from four interlocking cubes with cutouts that allow only indirect light to emerge, Simon P. Henningsen’s Kassablanka pendant light was de...

Panton and PH weren't just good friends

modblog 11/05/2011 0

The family connection between two of the great Danish lighting designers is widely known – indeed, anyone who is aware of Simon Henningsen‘s work will...

Looks like Bent Karlby for Lyfa, but isn't!

modblog 17/06/2010 0

With its structure of concentric metal squares and the light effects produced by the overlapping layers, it is perhaps unsurprising that the red and w...

The 1970 launch of F&M’s Formland

modblog 27/05/2010 0

Bent Rooke’s fascinating Tidsfasetter, a collation of art and design news items from Scandinavia stretching back to the 1960s, includes an article on ...

Jo Hammerborg's Zenith pendant

modblog 21/06/2010 0

One of the most frequently misattributed Fog & Mørup lights is the Zenith, pictured below, whose designer is often given as Simon P Henningsen, son of...

Ole Panton's Seks-tre-pendel

modblog 14/06/2010 0

One of the more elusive lights produced by Lyfa in the 1960s is the Seks-tre-pendel (pictured below, left), an unorthodox creation by Ole Panton. Born...

Jo Hammerborg and the Formland lamp series

modblog 05/12/2012 0

The information that emerged from our correspondence with the Hammerborg family over the past 18 months has been an important source for our new profi...

The real story of the Carl Thore lights

modblog 10/12/2012 0

There is an often-repeated urban myth that the multilayered pendant lamps usually known as Carl Thore lights were produced by Fog & Mørup. The true or...

Preben Dal: the mystery man of lights

modblog 20/05/2010 0

Who was Preben Dal? Nobody seems to know anything about the man who designed the wonderful Symfoni series for Hans Følsgaard A/S.Many are even unsure ...

Hidden treasure in the F&M Orient

modblog 26/07/2010 0

Few people know that when Jo Hammerborg‘s Orient pendant light first appeared on the market in the early 1960s, the range included a version of the Or...

Finn Juhl and the drivers of vintage value

modblog 08/06/2011 0

The perceived value (and so the price) of a vintage Danish light is usually fairly closely related to its historical retail price. Broadly speaking, t...

Jo Hammerborg’s earliest F&M designs

modblog 19/07/2010 0

When Jo Hammerborg joined Fog & Mørup in 1957 he lost no time in transforming the company’s product range and bringing it firmly into the modern age. ...

Lyfa’s iF Product Design Awards

modblog 28/06/2010 0

The International Forum (iF) Product Design Awards have been presented annually since 1953 to products deemed by an international committee of experts...

The spiral that's not a Lyfa Weisdorf

modblog 22/07/2010 0

It's not uncommon to see one or other of the two spiral-structured lamps pictured below being attributed to Louis Weisdorf for Lyfa. Usually in these ...

Jo Hammerborg’s Sera and Dano lights

modblog 12/07/2010 0

One of several themes that ran through Jo Hammerborg’s work at Fog & Mørup during the 1960s was that his lights were often produced in either two or t...

Zero: probably Fog & Mørup's largest and rarest light

modblog 06/07/2010 0

The multi-cylindrical Zero (pictured below), a classic Jo Hammerborg creation dating from late 1970 or early 1971, is a strong candidate for the title...

Verner Panton’s Panthella 3-light

modblog 27/08/2010 0

When people come across a vintage Panthella for the first time they often think there’s something wrong with the on/off switch. “It’s not working prop...

Looks like a PH 4/3 but isn't!

modblog 07/08/2010 0

The Penta (below) is a little-known Fog & Morup light designed by Jo Hammerborg and first appearing in the record in 1965. More traditional in form an...

1960s prism lights by Werner Schou for Coronell

modblog 20/08/2010 0

The lights pictured below (reproduced from a February 1973 Coronell of Denmark catalogue in our possession) are often said to have been designed by Sw...

Fog & Mørup’s 1969 Rainbow Line

modblog 16/08/2010 0

In 1969 four Fog & Mørup light models – Andreas Hansen’s Falcon and Jo Hammerborg’s Juno, Zone and Equator – were brought together in vibrant red, yel...

A Tivoli tangle

modblog 12/08/2010 0

The diamond-shaped raw metal wall light pictured below was produced in the 1970s by Holm Sørensen A/S, the company founded by Danish designer Sven Aag...

Five of 100 great Danish designs of 1974

modblog 02/08/2010 0

In 1974 a special edition of Mobilia magazine was dedicated to showcasing, as the title of the issue announced, "One Hundred Great Danish Designs!" Th...

Poul Henningsen’s lighting manifesto

modblog 18/03/2011 0

In November 1966 Danish homestyle magazine Bo Bedre published a feature by Kirsten Bundgaard in which Poul Henningsen offered his thoughts on lighting...

How Fog & Mørup’s Formland avoids dazzle

modblog 24/09/2010 0

An early 70s edition of Design from Scandinavia reveals the material that architects Sidse Werner and Leif Alring used to create the light-transmittin...

Quality System – back from obscurity

modblog 16/09/2010 0

From its inception in 1965 until its demise in 1985, Danish lighting company Quality System was hugely successful, and its products, designed by artis...

The origins of the Danish star light

modblog 21/11/2012 0

A couple of years ago we wrote about the fact that we had been unable to find reliable information about the origins of one of our favourite vintage D...

Hvidt & Mølgaard’s Fog & Mørup light design

modblog 17/12/2010 0

Peter Hvidt (1916–1986) and his business partner Orla Mølgaard (aka Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen) (1907–1993) are best known for their furniture – in particu...

Kastrup-Holmegaard’s Havanna series for F&M

redvangang 21/05/2011 0

The Kastrup-Holmegaard glassworks produced many different individually mouth-blown glass lamps for Fog & Mørup during the 1960s. Today the least well-...

Danish modern space stations?

modblog 25/04/2011 0

In September 1972, journalist Bengt Rooke reported in Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet that a 60-strong delegation of American architects and interior d...

Colour coordination in Danish lights

modblog 12/11/2010 0

In the late 1960s both Louis Poulsen and Fog & Mørup launched lines of assorted lamp models in coordinated colours under unifying taglines. In 1968 an...

End of an era: Tivoli's Divan 2 closes

modblog 04/04/2011 0

When Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens opens its gates on 14 April for the 2011 summer season, the doors to one of its oldest and most venerated restaurants...

Danlite Inc is Fog & Mørup USA

modblog 11/03/2011 0

Now and again it’s possible to find vintage lights by a New York-based company called Danlite Inc being advertised for sale in the United States. Thes...

Jo Hammerborg’s Saturn series

modblog 24/08/2010 0

One particular group of Fog & Mørup lights by Jo Hammerborg – which for convenience here we will call the Saturn series – embodies Hammerborg’s most e...

Poulsen’s IT lamp and the ghost of PH

modblog 07/01/2011 0

In view of their seminal influence both in Denmark and internationally, it is no surprise that Poul Henningsen’s ideas on lighting design were guiding...

The Senior and the President

modblog 03/03/2011 0

In the 1960s Jo Hammerborg designed two table lamps for Fog & Mørup which are easily and often confused. The Senior and the President (pictured in tha...

Jo Hammerborg’s smallest light?

modblog 04/02/2011 0

One of Jo Hammerborg’s earliest designs for Fog & Mørup, the Kubus (pictured below in an F&M advertisement published in 1961 and in our own photos) is...

Fog & Morup’s Chrome and Golden Lines

modblog 24/02/2011 0

We wrote in an earlier post about cross-model colour coordination at Fog & Morup under Jo Hammerborg’s artistic direction through the 1960s and 1970s,...

The price of a gold-plated Fog & Mørup Semi

modblog 14/04/2011 0

Following the post we wrote recently about Fog & Mørup’s Golden Line, the range of 24-carat gold-plated versions of F&M’s Semi, Sektor and Milieu pend...

The Schlegel lamp and its Tarok lookalike

modblog 28/01/2011 0

Fritz Schlegel’s classic bell-like light for Lyfa, the Schlegel-lampe, designed in 1938, inspired a number of similar designs with which it is often c...

Frandsen’s Fibonacci needs clear bulbs

modblog 26/11/2010 0

Danish architect Sophus Frandsen created the Fibonacci light, his timeless classic for Fog & Mørup, in the early 1960s. Despite being one of the compa...

A little-known light by Preben Dal

modblog 21/01/2011 0

Featured in Danish homestyle magazine Bo Bedre in January 1962 when his celebrated Symfoni (penultimate image below) was already on prominent display ...

Distinguishing the Karlebos from the Falcons

modblog 22/10/2010 0

We have often seen the light pictured in the first image below described as a Falcon, designed by Andreas Hansen and made by Fog & Mørup. But while th...

Piet Hein’s 1969 Ra lamp for Lyfa

modblog 02/09/2010 0

Bengt Rooke’s Tidsfasetter, a collation of historical art and design news items from Scandinavia, includes a 1969 piece entitled "Piet and Lux and Lyf...

Weisdorf’s Konkylie was made for trees

modblog 06/09/2010 0

Louis Weisdorf’s extraordinary Konkylie ("Conch Shell") light was originally designed for Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, where it hung from trees in glo...

The difference between Nordisk Solar and Anvia star lamps

modblog 19/11/2010 0

The star-shaped lacquered steel pendant light pictured below seems to embody the space-age style of the late 60s and early 70s, but in fact it was des...

Hans Due’s Optima was white at launch

modblog 30/09/2010 0

Bengt Rooke’s Tidsfasetter, a collation of vintage Scandinavian art and design news, includes an item that appeared in Denmark’s Ekstra Bladet newspap...

A rare 1960s wall lamp from Fog & Mørup

modblog 14/01/2011 0

At first glance the lights below, discovered in Finland, might be mistaken for a wall-mounted version of Verner Panton’s Flowerpot for Louis Poulsen –...

F&M Hekla’s fiery Icelandic connection

modblog 14/10/2010 0

It is widely known that Fog & Mørup’s mid-1960s Hekla pendant light was created by two furniture designers from Iceland, Petur B Luthersson and Jon Ol...