In September 1972, journalist Bengt Rooke reported in Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet that a 60-strong delegation of American architects and interior designers working on ideas for future space travel and living in space had consulted Louis Poulsen during a 14-day tour of Europe:
A group of 60 American architects and interior designers are currently visiting London as part of a 14-day study and work trip. In Copenhagen yesterday they had a working meeting with Louis Poulsen A/S and the Association of Furniture Designers and Interior Designers of Denmark. The 60 American interior designers and architects are members of the American Institute of Interior Designers (AID), which is involved in numerous projects including the design of interior public spaces and architecture.
One of the association’s major current projects is proposals for the interior residential environment of space stations, where scientists and researchers will be staying for up to 30 days at a time. Blanche F Start of Cambridge, Massachusetts, co-ordinates this project between the US Space Foundation, NASA and the AID.
Rooke’s report was accompanied by a photograph of the meeting at Louis Poulsen’s Nyhavn offices with the caption: “From left, President of the AID, S Vinick, board member Norman de Haan and PR man Alfred J Siesel. The playing cards are made of new materials that cannot burn. Lamps, chairs, curtains, light table are Verner Panton designs.”
Unfortunately the photo referred to by the caption is unavailable, so we are unable to know for sure which of Verner Panton’s lamps, chairs and curtains were presented to the space design team, but the final item mentioned – his light table for Louis Poulsen, the Ilumesa – is pictured below.
Month: April 2011
-
Poulsen, Panton and the space programme
-
The price of a gold-plated Fog & Mørup Semi
One of our readers has left a comment on 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 pendant lights. “I have [a Semi], which I call a trumpet lamp, with a diameter of 60cm in 24 carat gold. Can I get information about it and what price it was back then?” our reader asks.
The first reference to a gold-plated version of the Semi appears in a Fog & Mørup advertisement in March 1976, reproduced in the image below, in which prices are listed as follows:Brown/red/white/black Chromium-plated 24-carat gold-plated Semi 38cm diameter Around 168 Danish krone 485 krone 585 krone Semi 47cm diameter Around 248 krone 609 krone 712 krone Semi 70cm diameter Around 631 krone 1,144 krone 1,317 krone Thus we can see that the gold-plated Semis were approximately 2.1 to 3.5 times as expensive as the ordinary coloured versions, the smaller ones being relatively more costly compared with their coloured counterparts than the larger sizes.
For more information about the Semi generally, see our December 2010 blog post, The birth and afterlife of F&M’s Semi.
-
End of an era: the Divan 2 closes
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, the Divan 2 (pictured below) – for which Simon P Henningsen created the glitteringly multifacted Divan 2 light – will remain closed. The restaurant went into voluntary receivership in January and will reopen in May under new management and with a new identity following an extensive refurbishment.
Danish lighting collectors can consequently expect to see a substantial influx onto the market of Simon Henningsen‘s dagger-edged pendant lights (pictured below en masse in the restaurant with their creator during their installation in 1962), though the restaurant’s receivers may attempt to maximise revenue by trickling the lights onto the market rather than attempting to dispose of them all at once. Either way, the restaurant’s demise provides a great opportunity for collectors but truly marks the end of an era.
