Table lamp, 1924 metal

Designed in 1924 by Wilhelm Wagenfeld, the small, elegant table lamp looks as simple as a lamp post. Wagenfeld lamp is a symbol for the Bauhaus Classic period. Wagenfeld was 24 years old, when he was admitted as a journeyman to the Bauhaus workshop in Weimar. Here he designed the first model of this lamp as his solution to an assignment given to him by Moholy-Nagy. As Wagenfeld said years later, the Bauhaus designs were intended to be industrial products, and indeed looked like them. In fact they were hand-crafted. Today as well, the Wagenfeld table lamp WA 24continues to be manufactured on this basis, following the original specifications for dimensions and materials.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld

Wilhelm Wagenfeld, born in Bremen in 1900, studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule and after he started his apprenditiceship as a silveremith. In 1923 he was a student at the metal work laboratory of the Bauhaus, ran by Moholy-Nagy, Wagenfeld become assistent in 1926 and teacher in 1929. In the ensuing years he began to work in industry: the Jenaer Glaswerke, the Vereinigte Lausitze Glaswerke, and the Rosenthal porcelain factory. After the war, Wagenfeld moved to Berlin where he taught industrial design, first at the Leibruitz Academy and then at the Fine Arts School. Wagenfeld, well known a "the modern craftsman", managed to fit in with the industrial system. Not surprisingly, his name is closely linked to Bauhaus in Weimar, an astonishing incubator of pioneering experimentation and applied arts.