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Birdy is a table, wall and floor lamp series designed in 1952, in a modernist style.
The lamp series was produced and sold by the Norwegian electricity company Sønnico (Oslo) for many years. In 1954 the table lamp, then known as “s-30016” was awarded the highly esteemed Golden Medal at the Milan triennale.
In 2013 Northern Lighting decided to re-launch this design classic, taking care to preserve the original shape and highly functional features that at first made it such a well–loved light. The lamp series is available in off-white or matt grey colour with satin nickel finish and matt black colour with black or brass metal finish. To commemorate the centenary of Dahl’s birth in 1916, a new version of Birdy table is available in the colour Marsala, produced in a numbered series.
Birger Dahl
Award-winning designer Birger Dahl (1916 – 1998) was a pioneer of contemporary Scandinavian lighting. The mid-century years were a formative period of his work, when he forged his signature streamlined style and launched a new vision of lighting design. Dahl’s career had actually begun the previous decade, when he became head of design at Norwegian electronics firm Sønnico and created the award-winning Dokka pendant lamp.
Dokka was the first lamp in Norway to receive a Golden Medal award at the prestigious Triennale di Milano, which brought Norwegian lighting under the international spotlight. While acclaimed for his lighting designs, Dahl is also considered to be one of Norway’s leading Post-war interior architects. Strict geometric shapes, such as circles, cones and cylinders, were the building blocks of Dahl’s design vocabulary, which he softened with gentle contours.
He emphasised the purity of form, highlighting the shape of the object rather than hiding it behind decorative details or layers of ornamentation. Sensibilities like these explain why his work still appears modern today, and why lighting designs such as Dokka and Birdy are so compatible with the interiors of our time.
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