Out of the Display Case: Bedside Lamp by Marianne Brandt

// Object Talk
Thu, 19 Aug 2021, 6 p.m.
Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Open Stage
>> registration required

Before First World War, electric light was a luxury that only a few households could afford. Mainly "functional lights" were produced for street lighting, factories and shop windows. At the beginning of the 1920s, electric light conquered households, displacing gas and kerosene there, and began to become the standard in the apartments of non-profit housing. But in terms of design, these lights lacked the final consistency. Disappointed by this lack of supply, in 1925-1926 designers such as László Moholy-Nagy and Marianne Brandt designed the electric lights for the buildings of the Bauhaus in Dessau themselves. 

Marianne Brandt became the most important lighting designer at the Bauhaus, especially in collaboration with Hin Bredendieck. Both worked very closely with the lighting engineers of the Kandem company (Körting & Mathiesen AG) in Leipzig. The Bauhaus Dessau began a cooperation with this company in February 1928, which initially consisted of the design revision of factory drafts. With the Kandem bedside lamp No. 702 e, designed in 1928, modernism also arrived aesthetically in the everyday lives of many people. The lecture by Wolfgang Thöner, Head of the Collection Department, of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, traces the path to the design of this lamp in all its many aspects.