Carl Hansen & Søn’s Begonya and the discipline behind Danish design
Inside the Copenhagen exhibition “Balanced Principles,” a new pendant lamp by Øivind Slaatto is the latest proof of how to maintain brand legacy in contemporary design.
During 3daysofdesign 2026 in Copenhagen, Carl Hansen & Søn unveiled Begonya, a new sculptural pendant lamp designed by Øivind Slaatto, reinterpreting the logics of nature through a balance of mathematical control and unpredictability.
The lamp made its debut inside “Balanced Principles,” an exhibition staged in the brand’s flagship store, which set out to explore how material, form, and function come together through negotiation, experimentation, and craft.
Gallery
Open full width
Open full width
Carl Hansen & Søn at 3daysofdesign 2026:
Øivind Slaatto and Begonya
Slaatto is a Copenhagen-based designer with an early design career shaped by industrial and audio products before he turned his attention to light. Begonya marks his first collaboration with Carl Hansen & Søn. Similarly to other of his projects, the initial inspiration for the design came from nature, specifically from the beauty of looking into a fire.
Slaatto emphasises that fires are fascinating to the human eye because they are unpredictable; they will always look different from every angle and in every moment. To replicate this feeling, he designed a complex mathematical structure in a non-woven polyethylene dress that resembles paper, so that the lighting will always look different based on the height the lamp is positioned at and the angle from which we are looking at it. The lamp feels alive because, to the eye, it is both fixed and moving, similarly to most natural phenomena like fire or water. The name is a deliberate distortion, spelled with a “y” instead of the botanical “begonia”, representing the fusion between nature and artificiality.
The elliptical shade is engineered to deliver light properly to its surroundings but also to hide the light source, avoiding discomfort. Inside each shade is a complex aluminium skeleton finished in a warm gold tone, assembled through joints that allow the frame to hold together without glue or screws. Assembling the dress onto the frame is a complex process involving 168 precise joints, and making a single lamp can take up to 7 hours.
Craftsmanship and heritage
7 hours is an absurd amount of labour for an industrially produced lampshade, but it fits perfectly with the company’s philosophy and heritage. All of Carl Hansen & Søn’s products (except their outdoor line) are manufactured in Denmark, mostly by hand, a country where artisanality is becoming scarcer due to its high salaries, which cause many companies to move production elsewhere for affordability.
The brand is a strong supporter of handmade products, believing that humans are the highest level of technology we have available. Knud Erik Hansen, the company’s CEO and third-generation owner, frames this approach through a question: if the movement of a human hand while sanding a piece of wood is the way it is because of millions of years of evolution, how could a machine be able to replicate its sensibility?
Their current factory is based on the Danish island of Funen and it employs around 500 people. The facility not only hosts production but also an academy, where new craftsmen are trained each year through an intensive programme. As the products are mostly made by hand, the job can become physically taxing on the employees, and for this reason, the company has a physiotherapist available to all staff as well as warm-up sessions to attend in the morning in order to avoid sprains or stiffness.
Balanced Principles
The exhibition held at Carl Hansen & Søn’s flagship store featured more than the Begonya lamp as the brand’s new entry. The show ran from June 10 to 12 and was structured as a conversation between historical pieces and new ones, all anchored to the brand’s legacy. Alongside Begonya, the show presented the sculptural Scimitar Chair by Fabricius & Kastholm, designed in 1963 but reedited into production by the Danish company. The Porcelight is another reedition, a delicate bone-china pendant designed by Erik Magnussen in 1982 that turns the material’s translucency into soft, diffused light. The iconic Wishbone chair, the company’s most famous design, was presented in a new leather-upholstered version as a subtle reinterpretation.
What makes Begonya a useful object to think about in this exhibition’s context, beyond its obvious visual appeal, is how cleanly it compresses Carl Hansen & Søn‘s whole operating philosophy into a single product. The company’s defining tension has always been between handwork and industry, between the artisanality of the cabinetmaker and the demands of producing furniture at international scale without hollowing out what made it valuable in the first place.
Wegner’s Wishbone chair used wood and cord, Begonya solves this tension through aluminium and synthetic fibre. The materials have changed, as well as the design language, but the underlying commitment remains loyal to the company’s origin. “Balanced Principles” describes how a company keeps its identity intact across a century of change.
