A lamp with gossamer angel wings attached to the actual light bulb? As whimsical as it looked, Ingo Maurer’s creation, Lucellino, was one of the most well-known lighting pieces created.
Famed lighting designer Maurer died in Munich, Germany, on Oct. 21 at age 87 from complications from a surgical procedure. With his passing, the design world lost one of its most iconic figures, someone who for more than half a century pushed the barriers of imaginative design.
Although often thought Italian, Mauer was in fact German, born on an island in Lake Constance near the Swiss border. Originally working as a graphic designer, he eventually moved into lighting, founding his company in the early 1960s. That’s when he created his first design, called, appropriately enough, “Bulb.” It’s now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and set the tone and flavor for many of his subsequent designs.
“He used the technology in his lamps like a magic trick,” long-time friend and Paper magazine founder Kim Hastreiter said in Maurer’s New York Times obituary. “He loved the technology that was coming out, but to him it was like Houdini.”
Maurer himself said that while he was imaginative in his designs, the very concept of light itself was what most intrigued him. “I’m very lucky to work with the material which does not exist,” he said in a 2017 podcast cited in the Times obit. Light, he said, is “the spirit which catches you inside.”
His company, now called Ingo Maurer GmbH and based in Munich, eventually grew to include 70 employees and produced an endless stream of lighting designs, including his infamous 1994 chandelier made of suspended porcelain dish shards. He originally called it “Zabriskie Point” after the film of that era featuring a scene of a house exploding in slow motion. As the Times story recalls, at least one visitor to the European fair where it was introduced exclaimed, “Porca miseria!” which roughly translates into “Dammit!” in English. From then on, the fixture, which is still being made by hand and sells for close to $40,000, was known by that name per Maurer’s instructions.
Ingo Maurer is survived by two daughters, including the company’s current managing director, and four grandchildren.