OntwerperDanish
Erik Hansen
2 actieve items
Erik Hansen (1916-1982) was a Danish industrial engineer who became one of Le Klint's most enduring designers through a single, accidental encounter. Having built a bedside reading lamp for himself and needed a shade, his wife Ruth visited the Le Klint shop in Denmark to purchase one. Le Klint's sales director Allan Bock saw the lamp frame she had brought along, recognized its potential, and invited Hansen to develop the design for the company. The result, introduced in 1952, was the Sax wall lamp - named for the scissor mechanism at the heart of its extending wooden arm.
Hansen brought a methodical engineer's sensibility to the design. The arm of the Sax is built from two wooden sections joined by a pivot, allowing the shade to be extended away from or folded back toward the wall. The mount also pivots left and right, and the shade holder can be tilted up or down. This three-axis adjustability, achieved through purely mechanical means without any springs or cables, gave the lamp an unusual practicality that distinguished it from contemporaneous Scandinavian lighting. The frame was originally produced in oak, though beech and teak versions followed, each finished by hand at Le Klint's workshop in Odense.
The Sax has been produced continuously since 1952 and has expanded into a full family of models. The numbering encompasses several variants - including the 317, 324, 332, 334, and 335 - differing in arm length, shade direction (up or down), and wood species. The 224 series, often cited as the anniversary edition, remains in active production. The lamp's mechanical logic and its combination of natural wood with Le Klint's folded-paper shades placed it squarely within Danish Modernism's interest in functional beauty and honest materials.
On Auctionist, 32 items by Erik Hansen have been recorded, exclusively in the Lighting and Wall Lights categories. The lamp commands consistent secondary market interest across Scandinavian houses, with auction results ranging from roughly 2,900 to over 4,200 SEK for vintage examples. The leading auction venues for his work are Bidstrup Auktioner, Woxholt Auktioner, Palsgaard Kunstauktioner, and Bukowskis Stockholm. One example realized 3,155 EUR - reflecting the premium placed on early teak or oak examples in good condition.