Month: July 2010

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 Orient Minor (far left in the picture below) made of solid sterling silver and retailing at more than 10 times the price of other lamps in the line.

An April 1963 Fog & Morup catalogue lists the complete Orient range with prices in Danish kroner (Dkr), US dollars (USD) and UK pounds (GBP in pounds, shillings and pence) as follows:

There is, however, no sign of either the sterling silver or the anodised metal variants in a 1965 advertisement for the Orient (pictured above), and no mention of them in any subsequent F&M catalogues or advertisements in our possession. While the copper and aluminium versions of the Orient remained in production in both Major and Minor sizes until at least 1974, the anodised metal and solid silver editions never appeared again.

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. Out went the cumbersome chandeliers with their glass shades resembling fried eggs, and in came a swathe of sleek, minimal and modern designs that were produced to the highest possible standards of quality.



By as early as April 1963 the company’s catalogue of 40 different lines included 24 designs by Hammerborg himself, every one of which has withstood the harsh test of time and continues to look fresh nearly 50 years on. These are the Corona (pictured above), the Alfa wall light and Beta table lamp, the Club, the Dano, the Eiffel, the Etna (pictured below), the Juno, the Life, the Metro, the Monolit floor lamp, the Nordlys, the Nova, the Orient, the Optica (pictured second below), the Pisa, the Pompei, the Roulet, the Runda, the Saturn, the Studio, the Tunika, the Ultra and the Vasa.

One of several themes that ran through Jo Hammerborg’s work at Fog & Mørup during the 1960s was that lights were often produced in either two or three different metals/finishes – usually aluminium and copper when just two versions were produced, with brass making up the threesomes.



Examples include the Nova (above), with three solid metal versions, the Diskos and Lento (below) with three lacquered metal versions, and the Saturn with its two solid metal variants.



An apparently strange anomaly in this pattern arises, however, with the circular Sera and Dano lights – which seem as if they too should share a single name. Like their Saturn stablemates, one of the pair (the Sera, pictured below) is aluminium with an encircling band that is dark grey on the outside and cerise inside, while other (the Dano, pictured below the Sera) is copper with a black and orange band. Both Sera and Dano have a diameter of 38cm and a height of 10cm, and in fact they are wider, flatter versions of the 30 x 19cm Saturn.



But while the Sera is an only child, the Dano does in fact have a little-known and rarely seen sister light (pictured bottom) – one that matches it not in shape but in colour. This second Dano is rectangular, measuring 68 x 21.5cm, and is perhaps the reason why the Sera and circular Dano have separate identities.