Kupfer-Pendelleuchte 'Langelinie'

Like a stack of copper halos caught in mid-air, this Scandinavian Modern pendant light is the 'Langelinie', designed by Poul Henningsen in 1958 and made by Louis Poulsen in Denmark in the 1950s. Concentric copper rings step down from a slim cylindrical crown, so the Danish lamp reads as architecture as much as light, a small terraced pavilion hanging over the table.

Henningsen spent his working life on one question, how to light a room without glare. His answer, from the PH system of the 1920s onwards, was a series of layered shades calculated to catch the bulb and send its light out softly. The Langelinie carries that thinking into the late 1950s in a lighter, more open form, and takes its name from the Langelinie Pavilion on the Copenhagen waterfront. Each ring screens the source from view, while the pale undersides throw the light down and outward in even bands.

Decades have given the copper a soft, mottled patina, warm rose in daylight with darker freckles along the rims. Switched on in the evening, the outer band turns almost black against the glow and the inner rings fill with a honeyed light, stacked like the ripples of a stone dropped in still water. Hang it low over a round oak or teak dining table and the copper picks up the warmth of the wood, the light falling on plates and faces rather than in your eyes. Above a kitchen island or in a stairwell, where you can look up into its rings, it is just as much at home.

Cable length: 350cm