The Wagenfeld luminaire

The industrial designer Prof Martin Topel on a German design classic

The legendary WG 24 table lamp was designed in 1924 by Professor Wilhelm Wagenfeld, who was just 24 years old at the time. Which lamp is this?

Topel: The WG 24 lamp is certainly one of the best-known Bauhaus products, which is due to its great commercial success over the last 40 years. It is simply called "The Wagenfeld Lamp". Personally, I am very pleased about this, as an extraordinary designer personality is directly named here.

My personal favourite, however, is the somewhat earlier designed and simpler WA 23 SW, whose base and pedestal are made entirely of metal. In terms of production, this means much simpler tolerancing of the components and is - at least for me - a much simpler and more coherent concept.

The WG 24 was one of over 600 designs that Wagenfeld produced. He worked at the Bauhaus as a so-called form master. What does that mean?

Topel: The master of form was a key role at the Bauhaus and played a decisive role in the training of students. On the one hand, the task of the master of form was that of a teacher and project manager who supported the students in their projects. On the other hand, the form masters were to inspire the students with their own work and constantly push the boundaries of art and design through innovation and experimentation. With around 600 designs produced, Wilhelm Wagenfeld is therefore an exceptional role model. His background as a "glass craftsman" at the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke was the ideal person to exemplify the symbiosis of craftsmanship and industry at the Bauhaus. The large number of Wagenfeld's products (WMF, Tecnolumen, FSB etc.), some of which are still industrially manufactured today, are proof of this.

Experts say that the lamp is the embodiment of the Bauhaus idea. How do you recognise that?

Topel: In terms of the straightforward, geometric design and the combination of craftsmanship and industrial skills, this may be true. However, the Bauhaus also defined rational production as a measure of its values and here the design actually had great difficulties at the beginning, as industrial production caused a high level of waste and therefore high costs due to the tolerances of the glass components. This was later solved by improved manufacturing processes.

The glass shaft of the WG 24 model is not quite right in terms of maximum simplicity if I need an additional metal tube to conceal the cable. I then either show the cable or do without a transparent shaft. The first prototypes with the glass stem, for example, also dispensed with the metal tube and showed the cable - clearly the more honest solution for me.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld was a pioneer. His aim was to manufacture industrial products of high utility value, sophisticated and affordable. He also utilised new techniques and materials. What were they?

Topel: Thanks to his apprenticeship at the Vereinigte Lausitzer Werkstätten, he had a high level of expertise in the processing and design of glass. In addition, aluminium, for example, was an exciting new material due to the advent of lightweight aircraft and airship construction. Seamlessly drawn steel tubes allowed enormous strength for the first time and led, for example, to the first cantilever chairs by Mart Stamm and Marcel Breuer. All of this also flowed into Wagenfeld's work.

One of the guiding principles and the philosophy of the Bauhaus school was "form follows function". The Wagenfeld lamp has three basic geometric shapes: disc, cylinder and sphere. Does this make it timeless and modern?

Topel : It is timeless and modern because it was an excellent design and many people still choose it today. There are enough products that use basic geometric shapes and are still hideous.
"Form follows function" as a design principle was first formulated by the American architect Louis Sullivan in an essay in 1896. The Bauhaus also had many other values to offer, such as maximum reduction, material suitability, low-cost industrial production for the widest possible target group and, of course, design geared towards function and practicality.

From 1930, however, the hype surrounding the Bauhaus luminaire was over. Why was that?

Topel: The sales price of 58.00 Reichsmark (RM) was very high and unaffordable for most people. In 1924, the average monthly income was around 103.00 RM - so the lamp cost half a month's income. Compared to today, with a retail price of €620 and an average monthly income of €4,100, this is only just under a seventh. This contradicted the Bauhaus' proclaimed aim of developing affordable, well-designed products for the general public.
The global economic crisis, which began in October 1929 and peaked in 1932, brought trade, especially for luxury goods, to a virtual standstill. Food and everyday necessities were now the order of the day.

It was the collaboration with Walter Schnepel, the founder of Tecnolumen, which is still authorised to manufacture the model today, that brought the major breakthrough from the early 1980s onwards, with further refinements being made to the table lamp to improve its functionality. And then, in 1982, it was honoured with the German "Gute Form" award. The same applies here: Good things take time?

Topel: Certainly, a good design and the corresponding product development take time, although not usually 58 years. The WG24 was a radical luxury product for its time, and was also born during a brief phase of economic prosperity. After that, it was simply not the time for such products and it is possible that the endeavours to find a producer simply fell asleep after the Second World War. So it is all the more wonderful that so many years later it led to such great success and ultimately to the founding of Tecnolumen.

This model has been worthy of a museum since 1986 and can be found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among other places. What is also special about it is that even when it is switched off, it looks quite impressive. Over the years, however, there have also been many imitations. That's a problem with successful models, isn't it?

Topel: Plagiarism always occurs when a successful product can be brought to market at a significantly lower price, very similarly or identically, with supposedly, or superficially, similar functional characteristics - usually from countries with different wage structures and legal concepts. With a visually identical or similar table lamp, the functional property "light" is of course relatively easy to fulfil. It is possible that there are many owners who are not even aware of their plagiarism or who are not interested in licence issues if the aesthetics are the same.
Counterfeiting is much more dramatic in the case of safety-relevant products that give the impression of being an original product with guaranteed properties. This is the case, for example, with safety bolts for the wings of the Airbus A380, or with medical products. This is where things certainly become highly criminal.

Where would you put this Wagenfeld lamp?

Topel: I don't own a WG24. My personal classic is the Costanza / Costanzina lamp by Luceplan from 1986 by designer Paolo Rizzato. I have this lamp in different variations in 7 different places in my house. But that would be another interview...

Uwe Blass

Professor Martin Topel is an industrial designer and has been a professor at the University of Wuppertal's Industrial Design programme since 1999. His department specialises in the product development of capital goods and product systems.