Modern furniture disasters, the Wagenfeld lamp

Bauhaus, the epitomy of modern design. You can't talk about modern design without Bauhaus entering the conversation early. Even people who don't know what they are talking about when it comes to modern design will name drop Bauhaus. There, I just did it myself.

My first encounter with Bauhaus was actually the band, some people in my college dorm of long ago kept listening to the Bauhaus rendition of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust". They would listen to the song, over, and over, and over, and over. I really got sick of it, and them, it was an omen that I did not see before me.

Jump to my Foolish Period of buying "modern" items, and we have the Wagenfeld lamp.



"Impeccably crafted of clear and opaline glass, and nickel-plated metal, this lamp's balanced proportions adhere strictly to the original Bauhaus design. Each lamp is numbered and certified with the Bauhaus logo. Accommodates up to 75-watt bulb (not included)."

An icon of modernism in the form of lighting. Represented at MoMA and sold at their online store for a Bauhaus students tuition, $795. $715 if you're a member, I joined just to buy the lamp. Of course!

Unfortunately this lamp only takes a 75-watt bulb, because you really need a 300-400 watt bulb to effectively get light out of it. This is probably one of the poorest pieces of lighting since the whale oil lamp. The opaline glass globe effectively blocks the vast majority of light coming out of the bulb and even in the darkest of rooms it is only a night light. Wagenfeld joins Le Corbusier and the Eameses in the special group of futurists who saw a world of small people, because only a very small person at a very small table with this lamp very near to them could see by its light as it lights up a very small area.

The construction leaves much to be desired , the globe sits on an outer ring of metal which is connected by a few small radial pieces of metal to a center ring, which in turn sits around the bulb socket, tightened in place by a couple screws. The problem is that the screws are merely there for tension and do a terrible job at it. The whole top has a tendency to shift around under the lightest pressure and tilts, rendering this piece of modern design cockeyed.

The whole center of the piece is assembled in a stack and held together at the ends with some screws, this also has a tendency to shift around, looking like a stack of blocks built by a two year old instead of the "impeccably crafted" piece of lighting it is supposed to be.

The coup de grace for this piece is the pull switch, a string with a metal ball at the end. As expected, you pull the string, the light goes on or off. You then let go of the string and the metal ball bounces off the glass center shaft, the aural effect is unpleasant at best.

This small lamp which lit a very small area was wrapped in very small plastic bubbles and put in a not so small box. In a fit of sanity, I dumped this lamp on eBay. Perhaps the buyer in New York City lives in a very small apartment and the small amount of light will add a small amount of joy to a very small room. The lamp turned out to be a better investment than many high tech stocks I purchased around the same time, for while I am not claiming a capital gain for it, it did return a small amount of cash.