Lamp by Louis Poulsen

Finnish designer Lisa Johansson-Pape enjoyed a long and varied career in lighting, furniture, textile, and ceramic design. She was one of Finland's leading lighting designers in the 20th century and was instrumental in promoting Finnish design internationally.

Born in 1907, Lisa Johansson-Pape studied at the Industrial Art Institute in Helsinki University of Art & Design (Now Aalto University of Art & Design), graduating in 1928. She worked as a furniture designer for Kylmäkoski and Stockmann and created carpets for the Friends of Finnish Handicraft, before turning her attention to lighting design. She collaborating with the Stockmann-owned lighting factory Orno from 1942, famously remarking, “it was quite by accident that I became a design light artist. By education, I am a furniture designer, but I had to make lamps during the war.”

Notable designs include the Lisa (1947), Sipuli (1954), and Laura (1957) pendant lamps. The Sipuli, often referred to by the English translation Onion, resembles the form of the vegetable for which it was named. The angular design in opaline glass was awarded a gold medal at the Triennale di Milano in 1954, which was just one of several prizes Johansson-Pape received in her career; she was also awarded a silver medal at the 1951 Triennale di Milano and the Pro-Finlandia prize in 1957. In the 1950s she developed an interest in ceramics and glass, collaborating with historic Finnish glass factory Iittala.

In addition to the famous Milan Triennial exhibitions, Johansson-Pape represented Finland in venues around the world. She provided the lighting fixtures for the Finnish display at the New York World Fair in 1939 and the Design in Scandinavia exhibition that traveled to multiple museums in the US in the mid-1950s. She also organised a Rya textile exhibition, which debuted in Helsinki in 1956 before it toured the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe. In 1960, her solo exhibition Light—Glass—Metal opened in Helsinki, followed in 1966 by a joint exhibition with friend and textile artist Dora Jung in Stockholm.

Johansson-Pape was an active member of several national design organisations, including the Friends of Finnish Handicraft, which she joined in 1933 and chaired as Artistic Director from 1951 to 1985. Her commemorative Dora Jung exhibition toured many cities after it opened in Helsinki in 1983. She lectured and wrote extensively on the subject of lighting design, promoting Scandinavian modernist principles; “a good light fixture must be simple, and its structure and function must be both neat and correct,” she wrote.

Now recognized as one of the world’s foremost lighting manufacturers, Louis Poulsen began its long life in 1874, first as the Copenhagen Direct Wine Import Company, and then, starting in 1896, as an electrical components and tools supplier. In the 1910s, Louis Poulsen (1871-1934), nephew of the Copenhagen-based company’s original founder, took over and soon after became partners with entrepreneur and electricity enthusiast Sophus Kaastrup-Olsen (1884-1938). Together they reincorporated as Louis Poulsen & Co. In 1917, Kaastrup-Olsen acquired Poulsen's shares and became the company’s sole proprietor, just in time to benefit from the increasing demand for electrically powered fixtures that developed during and after World War I.

In 1924, Kaastrup-Olsen began collaborating with Danish architect Poul Henningsen (1894-1967) on the design of an innovative, three-shade lamp system, after Henningsen was chosen to participate in the legendary Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes to be held the following year in Paris. Henningsen won the gold medal there, and his work with the Louis Poulsen & Co. grew into a lifelong collaboration that remains the foundation of its ongoing production today.

Henningsen was obsessed with light and considered himself a “lighting architect.” With his PH Lamp series, he sought to create glare-free yet direct light where it was most needed, accompanied by soft shadows, lit by the then-new incandescent bulbs. He did not just design a light, but an entire system; around a thousand different models have been designed over the years. Pioneering and timeless classics such as Henningsen’s Artichoke Lamp (1958) and the PH5 (1958), as well as fellow Danish designer Verner Panton’s Ceiling Flower Pot lamp (1968) and Panthella table lamp (1971), are considered to be among the most iconic Scandinavian contributions to modern design culture.

Louis Poulsen—beloved by design lovers around the world—continues to specialize in the development and production of lighting solutions for indoor and outdoor applications. With function, comfort, and ambience at the core of each design, the company’s products can be found in numerous design museum collections, including MoMA (New York), Cooper Hewitt (New York), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museum of Decorative Arts (Copenhagen), Design Museum (London), and Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein). Today Louis Poulsen is part of Polaris Private Equity.

* All images courtesy of Louis Pousen.