Ellen Lupton, curator emerita at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, reflects on Bauhaus-era designer Marianne Brandt’s Pendant Lamp HMB. She says Marianne’s innovative ceiling lamps continue to inspire contemporary design today. “Several ceiling lamps designed by Marianne Brandt at the Bauhaus are still in production,” she says. Her Pendant Lamp HMB of 1925 was designed to hang over a table, and the height can be adjusted with a pendulum and counterweight. “The piece combines circles, spheres, and lines to evoke universal simplicity. Brandt, a member of the metal workshop at the Bauhaus, combined spare geometric volumes with clever functional details.”
A version of this article originally appeared in “Curator’s Icons” in Sixtysix Issue 13.
