Icons Reinstated

The origin story

Vaarnii’s Hans lighting series was first designed in the 1960s. Its story is one of popularity followed by obscurity. Ever since Vaarnii reissued the Hans lights in 2023, a new appreciation for these graphic pine forms and the special quality of warm wood-filtered light they omit has been found. The author of the lights, and another few thousand designs besides, is Hans-Agne Jakobsson, a Swedish designer and prolific master of lighting.

Jakobsson was born and educated in Gothenburg in 1919, studied architecture, was employed as an industrial designer at General Motors and later as an apprentice to Carl Malmsten. It was shortly after this apprenticeship – perhaps inspired by Malmsten’s success who was one of Sweden’s most influential designers – that Jakobsson established his own manufacturing company in 1951.

Jakobsson had designed only a handful of works at the time, so it would have been an ambitious move for the 32-year-old to establish his own business. It appears the self-confidence was well-founded though, as the factory in Markaryd would go on to produce and distribute Jakobsson’s commercially successful designs for many decades to come.

He pioneered an innovative system for creating lights that were not only structurally efficient but also emit an uncommonly soft and warm light, mirroring the quality of wood itself.

Lighting became the focus of Jakobsson’s career. He produced an estimated 2000 lighting designs in materials ranging from brass to textiles, glass and wood. He manufactured many designs himself but also worked with other local makers such as AB Elysett, who produced some of the original Hans lights, and for large brands such as Ikea, for whom Jakobsson designed several lighting collections in the 1970s.

With each material came an intense period of investigation, observation, and design. The Hans lights, and the use of pine veneer, was a particularly fruitful area for Jakobsson. He pioneered an innovative system for creating lights that were not only structurally efficient but also emit an uncommonly soft and warm light, mirroring the quality of wood itself.

The Hans lights are visually heavy, replicating solid wood, yet physically light.

The thin sheets of pliable veneer provide both the lights' shade and structure, composed of concentric bands of veneer arranged in different graphic formations and sizes, supported by an invisible wooden structure. The Hans lights are visually heavy, replicating solid wood, yet physically light. Jakobsson applied his system to hundreds of variants, producing pine veneer lights in every format and size imaginable.

Jakobsson’s pine veneer lights were commercially successful and could be found across Scandinavia, in homes and public spaces, throughout the 1960s and 1970s. But the inevitability of changing tastes and fashions meant they fell out of favour and obscurity beckoned.

Hans lights today

When Vaarnii began exploring how to use our signature material, pine, in lighting it became impossible to ignore the extensive series of pine designs by Jakobsson. We enjoyed the playful contradiction between the structurally light and flexible veneer and the ‘heavy’ connotation of the lighting. And we appreciate the careful engineering of forms and the versatile structural system. Jakobsson’s lengthy and dedicated investigation into using pine veneer for lighting was hard to beat, we concluded.

 
Today, the Hans lights are made for Vaarnii by master crafts-maker Heikki in Finland. The designs have been subtly reengineered to provide an even more reliable and resilient product. We found it possible to push Jakobsson’s system even further and created extra-large versions of some original designs. The process of making is painstakingly careful and craft-led with each light being entirely handmade and assembled. We use the finest quality pine veneer available, and each light has a unique grain and subtly unique shape.

The refreshed Vaarnii Hans lights are fit for a new generation. Once again, their bold graphic forms are taking up space in homes and public buildings everywhere, providing the special, comforting warm light that only they can.