Louis Poulsen 🇩🇰 AJ ROYAL Pendant Lamp

Suspension AJ Royal Louis Poulsen – Arne Jacobsen, 1957

AJ Royal Pendant is among the Arne Jacobsen’s designs developed in 1957 for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen (Radisson Collection). Here it could be found in a copper version above the tables in the snack bar behind the atrium, in the lounge on the 1st floor and in the Panorama Lounge on the 21st floor. The hotel opened in 1960 gave Copenhagen its first real high-rise building heavily inspired by New York skyscrapers. In those days, the lamp was simply called the AJ Pendant.

The spherical design from 1958 is regarded as Jacobsen’s first steps back to the basic geometrical shapes that characterize the world-famous Danish architect’s later designs. The AJ Royal formed part of the overall design concept that he developed for the hotel: indeed, he did not only design the hotel down to the smallest detail, he also designed nearly all the hotel’s original furniture (such as the famous Egg and Swan lounge chairs, from Fritz Hansen) and utility items. The lamps are probably the most well known globally, including the AJ Lamp from 1957.

The AJ Royal was originally produced in three colours: light grey, dark brown and black. Today, the AJ Royal is available in white in its two original sizes. A smaller variant is introduced in 2020 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the hotel, just as the series is reintroduced in black.

The AJ Royal retains its classic, graphic look as sharply as ever – irrespective of whether it lights up a dining table, is used in an office, or a showroom, where it ensures an even and flawless downward light and generates ambience with its softened upward light.

AJ Royal Ø37 cm

Dimensions Ø37 x H18,1 cm

Light source LED 2700K 16W, 930-1100 lumen (DALI or phase dimming)

Weight 4,0 kg

AJ Royal Ø37 cm – White

AJ Royal Ø37 cm – Black

AJ Royal Ø50 cm

Dimensions Ø50 x H22,5 cm

Light source LED 2700K 30W, 1898-2242 lumen (DALI or phase dimming)

Weight 5,8 kg

AJ Royal Ø50 cm – White

AJ Royal Ø50 cm – Black

Materials lacquered spun aluminium and steel – built-in frosted acrylic diffusor which diffuses the light and gives a glare-free light

Montage fabric-covered electric cable – canopy included – cable length 4 m

Arne Jacobsen

Arne Jacobsen is born on February 11, 1902 in Copenhagen. His father, Johan Jacobsen, is a wholesale trader in safety pins and snap fasteners. His mother, Pouline Jacobsen, a bank clerk, paints floral motifs in her spare time. The family lived in a typical Victorian style home. As a contrast to his parents’ overly decorated taste, Arne paints his room in white.

Background & school relations
He met the Lassen brothers at Nærum Boarding School: later, Flemming Lassen was to become his partner in a series of architectural projects. Arne Jacobsen is a restless pupil, always up to pranks, with a self-deprecating humour. Already as a child, he showed an extraordinary talent for drawing and depicting nature through scrupulous studies. He wants to be painter, but his father felt that architect was a more sensible choice.

The pleasant and the necessary trips abroad
Jacobsen’s travelling begin already in his twenties, when he went to sea to New York. Then followed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in Germany and a series of study and drawing excursions to Italy. Jacobsen produced some of his finest watercolours during this period, capturing atmospheres and shapes accurately and carefully. From the beginning of his career, Jacobsen turned his gaze abroad, without abandoning Danish traditions.

Arne Jacobsen behind the design
Jacobsen production reflects his personality: an insistent, perfectionist modernist, to whom no detail was trivial, although the main picture was basically black/white and unambiguous. On the other hand, the nature-loving botanist and jovial family man: like him, his work is precise and warm, Danish and universal, modern and timeless.