At about the same time that Goseck Cir­cle (see Fea­ture 1) was erect­ed, humans learned how to make light by ignit­ing dry mate­r­i­al with flints. Accord­ing to archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence, the inven­tion of the lamp took place not long after­ward when fire (which had been trans­port­ed by self-con­sum­ing torch) was placed in shells or hol­lowed- out rocks. In the eras that fol­lowed, light­ing design was large­ly a process of find­ing ever more effi­cient tech­nolo­gies— kerosene, gas, car­bon fil­a­ment, mer­cury vapor, diode — for sus­tain­ing and then replac­ing flame.

That arc changed in 1966 when Ingo Mau­r­er launched his Bulb table lamp, in which bulb-shaped Mura­no crys­tal sur­rounds a sim­ple incan­des­cent light­bulb. A rev­e­la­tion to indus­try col­leagues and the pub­lic alike, Bulb sud­den­ly ele­vat­ed light’s enclo­sure to the same impor­tance as the light itself, because Mau­r­er had treat­ed it as a can­vas for his per­son­al observations.

Com­men­ta­tors often praise the humor that the Ger­man design­er brought to the medi­um. Hand­writ­ten notes, shat­tered porce­lain plates, and rub­ber gloves were all fair game as hold­ers and shapers of light. Fans also make the point that Mau­r­er was just as fas­ci­nat­ed by emerg­ing light­ing tech­nolo­gies as his pre­de­ces­sors, and he reg­u­lar­ly pio­neered appli­ca­tions for LEDs.

Yet not every vision­ary has had the longevi­ty of Mau­r­er, who worked con­sis­tent­ly and charis­mat­i­cal­ly until his death in 2019. One rea­son for his remark­able stay­ing pow­er is the poignance that lies just beneath even his most com­i­cal works. Call­ing light ​“the spir­it which catch­es you inside” Mau­r­er under­stood that man­made illu­mi­na­tion could be as emo­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful as day­light— that it could stim­u­late mem­o­ry, prompt feel­ings of safe­ty, and inspire cama­raderie. His works pay trib­ute to the nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na that long dic­tat­ed every­day life, and to humans’ mil­len­nia-span­ning efforts to cre­ate light in the sun’s absence.

Like Ingo Mau­r­er before them, these light­ing design­ers are pro­duc­ing med­i­ta­tions on the nat­ur­al world.

Davide Grop­pi

Ital­ian design­er Davide Grop­pi​’s ear­ly career bears a strik­ing resem­blance to Ingo Maurer’s. Just as the mae­stro worked as a graph­ic artist before burst­ing onto the design scene with the 1966 launch of Bulb, so Grop­pi cre­at­ed mechan­i­cal illus­tra­tions for a liv­ing and then made a splash in 1993, when 40 of his Baloo lamps were dis­played at the Salone del Mobile. Grop­pi has also shared Maurer’s fas­ci­na­tion with recre­at­ing nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na with elec­tric light. His icon­ic Moon pen­dant is a spher­i­cal PVC frame cov­ered in rice paper, the vari­a­tions in which evoke lunar topography.

Mar­jan van Aubel

In 2021, Dutch design­er Mar­jan van Aubel launched a Kick­starter cam­paign for a pen­dant light called Sunne that was ful­ly fund­ed by the next day. The sus­pend­ed fix­ture ele­gant­ly packs sev­er­al of-the-moment themes in one cap­sule-shaped prod­uct: it is pow­ered by inte­grat­ed pho­to­voltaics, pro­gram­ma­ble by smart­phone, and col­or-chang­ing accord­ing to users’ cir­ca­di­an rhythms. With the help of her new busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gist part­ner Erwin Marges, van Aubel for­mal­ly launched Sunne in 2022, and the lumi­naire is being made to order.