Danish selection

Ahead of its 150th anniversary, Fritz Hansen launches a new light by Kasper Kjeldgaard and a tempting assortment of updated classics

- Fritz Hansen

Given the prominent position that the Fritz Hansen furniture brand occupies in the Danish design industry, the addition of a new collaborator to their roster – which already includes illustrious names such as Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjærholm, Jaime Hayon and Cecilie Manz – is cause for fanfare. Especially when this collaboration has come about through Wallpaper’s matchmaking. It was in late 2018 that we first introduced the brand to artist and designer Kasper Kjeldgaard, to create a one-off piece of lighting for our Wallpaper* Handmade X exhibition at Milan Design Week (see W*245). Three and a half years on, Fritz Hansen and Kjeldgaard are cementing their partnership with the new ‘Oneline’ light, due to launch in September 2022.

At a glance, the new light is much simpler than Fritz Hansen and Kjeldgaard’s ‘Centres of Rotation’ lamp for Handmade, which involved an illuminated beeswax disc tethered to a supporting brass rod that concealed the electrical wiring. ‘Oneline’, as befits its name, consists of a tubular piece of metal. Suspended by silver-tone wiring, it looks like a single line hovering mid-air. On its underside are five slim openings, revealing a dimmable LED light source led through extremely thin wires. Joints on either end allow the light source to be rotated 360 degrees, so as to cast its glow in any direction. Its minimalist form and elegant construction belie years of R&D – as Kjeldgaard points out, ‘things that appear simple are always the most complex to create’.