INGO MAURER
He is a lighting poet, who turns lamps into sophisticated lighting objects: Ingo Maurer, graphic designer by trade, became a product designer more out of necessity. As bread-earner of the family Munich-born Ingo Maurer designed his first lamp. This was in the year 1966 and his Bulb lamp revolutionised the lamp and lighting industry! With Bulb Ingo Maurer made the illuminant the center of attention and forwent the traditional lamp base and lamp shade. Instead, an oversized, hand-blown glass replica of a light bulb envelops the illuminant. The Bulb lamp was an immediate success that even found its way into the Modern Museum of Art in New York. This was the start of the company Ingo Maurer in Munich, other designs followed. On a trip to Japan he came to love fine rice paper and the traditional fans made of bamboo. With this newly discovered material Ingo Maurer created countless lamps, like the Knitterling suspension lamp or the Maru suspension lamp.
As a great fan of the classic carbon filament light bulb he likes to stage it for everyone to see in many of his designs. As seen with Bulb or the later Lucellino often his lamps seem to be an homage to the classic light bulb. For the inventor of the classic light bulb Thomas Alva Edison's 100th birthday Ingo Maurer created a fascinating suspension lamp called “Wo bist du Edison?” (German for “Where are you Edison?”) that carries the hologram of a virtual light bulb on its lampshade.
However, his love for the seasoned light bulb did not keep him from working with modern light sources and lighting techniques and using them for his lamps. In 1983, while the low-voltage technology was still in its early stages of development, he created the minimalist floor lamp Ilios. A year later the low-voltage lighting system YaYaHo followed, becoming a surprising worldwide success and bringing the company Ingo Maurer a huge boost. He also adopted LED technology early on and helped develop it further. In 1999 Ingo Maurer already experimented with this new technology and designed not only functional lamps, but also unique lighting objects like luminous carpets and even wall paper.
In time Ingo Maurers works became more and more artistic and his lamps seemed to come to life. With mirrors, holograms, or wings Ingo Maurer enchants his customers and developed touch-tronic transformers, that switch lamps on and off by touch. Additionally, he conquered the public sphere with his light installations and designed the lighting for metro stations, theaters, public places, as well as shops and private houses.
Lamps and light installations by Ingo Maurer speak a certain design language, whose message is understood worldwide. Their inventive names like Knitterling (a wordplay with the German words for “butterfly” and “to crumple up”: “Schmetterling” and “knittern”), Campari Light, Lucellino, Birdie, To-Be 1, or Bang Boom Zettel'z contribute to that. For Ingo Maurer light is pure adventure and there is always more to discover!