Vintage Divan-2 ‘Tivoli’ Pendant

A burst of folded colour hanging on a single thread, this Scandinavian Modern pendant light is the Divan 2 ‘Tivoli’, designed by Simon P. Henningsen in 1962 and made by Lyfa in Denmark in the 1960s. Built from angled metal panels, some coloured in turquoise, violet, deep blue and red, others mirror-bright, it looks less like a lamp than a small crystal formation caught mid-growth.

Henningsen created it for the Divan 2 restaurant in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, and the name stayed with it. The idea follows a deeply Danish conviction about light, that the bare bulb should never meet the eye. Here the panels do that work, overlapping in sharp facets so the light is screened, caught and passed from one coloured face to the next. It belongs to the early 1960s, when Danish lighting began to trade quiet restraint for bolder geometry and a real sense of play.

Switched off, the bright panels mirror the room around them while the painted ones read as cool blues with a flash of red. Switched on, the inside warms to coral, lilac and pale aqua, and a soft coloured glow spills from between the blades. The metal carries a light bloom of age on its facets, honest and gentle. Hang it low over a small dining table or in a hallway, where it can be seen from below and from the side, and let it make every evening a little more theatrical.