BST 23, MSW 27 and BH23: Bauhaus Reflectors from Wall to Floor

Three lamps in the TECNOLUMEN range trace back to the first decade of the Bauhaus: a floor lamp by Gyula Pap, a wall lamp by Mart Stam and a counterweighted floor lamp whose designer is not known. This piece looks at the people behind them, and at how one idea, a lamp built around a reflecting surface, moves from the floor to the wall and back again.

Weimar, 1923: a workshop rethinking the light fitting

The Bauhaus opened in Weimar in 1919 under Walter Gropius, and its workshops were meant to be places where artists learned to design for industry. The metal workshop became the laboratory for lighting. In the early 1920s its members started again from geometry. A lamp became a composition of a few elementary parts: a disc for the base, a line for the stem, a sphere or dome for the light.

The best-known result is the table lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Karl Jucker, which set the tone for what people now picture when they hear the words Bauhaus lamp. The story of that design is told in our piece on Wagenfeld and the metal workshop. The lamps discussed here share its habits: bare materials, visible construction and light shaped by a surface rather than hidden behind a fabric shade.

1923 was the year the school had to show the public what it was doing. The great Bauhaus exhibition that summer included the Haus am Horn, an experimental show house designed by the painter Georg Muche to demonstrate how modern people might live. The first of our three lamps begins here.

Gyula Pap and the BST 23 for the Haus am Horn

Gyula Pap (1899–1983) was a Hungarian artist and one of the gifted members of the metal workshop in Weimar. He designed the BST 23 Bauhaus Floor Lamp in 1923 for Muche's house, as part of its picture of a modern interior. The idea is remarkably pure. A bare bulb stands at the top of a slender stem, crowned by a mirrored dome. The mirror turns the light back down onto a frosted glass disc, so the glow collects in the glass and seems to hover at the top of the lamp.

Pap put the bulb on display and used the silvered top of the bulb itself as the reflector, then gave the light a surface to land on. The frosted disc is both diffuser and shade, and because it is flat and translucent it adds almost no visual mass. The construction is equally frank: black-lacquered iron and nickel-plated brass, joined in a way that lets you read how the lamp stands up.

The measurements explain its presence in a room. The lamp is 1680 mm tall, with a shade of Ø 370 mm and a base of Ø 400 mm. The broad base and the equally broad disc frame the long vertical line between them, like two circles on either end of a drawn stroke. TECNOLUMEN reproduces it from Pap's detailed original drawings, and each lamp is sequentially numbered and marked with the TECNOLUMEN / BAUHAUS hallmark. It takes an E27 bulb of up to 75 W.

Mart Stam and the MSW 27: the wall becomes the reflector

Mart Stam (1899–1986) was a Dutch architect at the centre of the modern movement. He is credited with the first cantilever tubular-steel chair, he built a house for the Weissenhof Estate exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927, and he taught as a guest lecturer at the Bauhaus after the school had moved to Dessau.

The MSW 27 Bauhaus Wall Lamp dates from 1927, the same year as Weissenhof. It is a wall lamp reduced to a single gesture: a shallow, semicircular metal reflector held off the wall on a brass base. The bowl washes light up and across the wall, and the plaster itself becomes the second reflector. Nothing is added for decoration. The reflector is Ø 300 mm and projects 370 mm from the wall, and it comes in a polished or a matt nickel finish. Like the BST 23, it takes an E27 bulb, and each lamp is consecutively numbered with the TECNOLUMEN signet.

Seen next to Pap's lamp, the logic is familiar: both give the light a surface to bounce off and let that surface do the visible work. Pap mounted his reflector on a stem; Stam fixed his to a wall and made the room part of the lamp.

The BH23: an unnamed lamp from the same years

The third design has a less tidy history. The BH23 Bauhaus Floor Lamp belongs to the period of experiment around the Bauhaus metal workshop in the early 1920s, and TECNOLUMEN dates it to around 1923. The name of its original designer has not survived, so it is best described by what it does rather than by who drew it.

What it does is balance. An adjustable arm, 760 mm long, carries an opal-glass shade at one end and a counterweight at the other, pivoting on a nickel-plated column. You can swing the light over a chair to read, then lift it away. The frame reaches 1610 mm at its highest, and the base is only Ø 200 mm, and the lamp weighs 11.6 kg. Its geometry of sphere, disc and line puts it in the same family as the lamps above, and each example is nickel-plated, consecutively numbered and stamped with the TECNOLUMEN / BAUHAUS signet.

One reflector, three positions

Put the three side by side and a clear line runs through them. Each lamp is built around a curved or flat surface that catches the light and passes it on.

• BST 23 (floor): a mirrored dome over the bulb sends light down onto a frosted glass disc of Ø 370 mm. The glow sits in the room like a floating plate.
• MSW 27 (wall): a Ø 300 mm nickel bowl sends light up and out, and the wall finishes the job.
• BH23 (floor, movable): an opal-glass shade on a 760 mm arm diffuses the light at the point where you need it, and the counterweight lets you move that point.

The shift is from ambient to directed light, and from fixed to adjustable. The BST 23 and the MSW 27 are both indirect lamps: you see the lit surface more than the bulb. The BH23 is the one that works as a task light. That makes them easy to combine. A pair of MSW 27 lamps on a wall gives a soft wash that lifts the ceiling; a BST 23 in a corner adds a quiet vertical accent; a BH23 beside a reading chair provides the light you actually read by.

Living with the three designs today

All three are slim in plan, which matters in smaller rooms. The BST 23 is a thin line with a transparent crown, so it adds light without blocking sightlines. The MSW 27 takes no floor space at all and suits a hallway, a bedroom wall in place of bedside table lamps, or the wall above a sofa. The BH23 needs the most clearance, since the arm swings through 760 mm, so give it a spot beside a chair where it can move freely.

Finishes are part of the choice. The BST 23 pairs black-lacquered iron with nickel-plated brass and frosted glass, which reads crisply against pale walls. The MSW 27 in polished nickel picks up reflections from the room, while matt nickel gives a quieter surface. The BH23 is entirely nickel-plated with opal glass, so it sits comfortably next to either. TECNOLUMEN, founded in Bremen by Walter Schnepel, assembles its lamps by hand to the original drawings.

To see these lamps alongside the Wagenfeld table lamps and the rest of the range, browse the full TECNOLUMEN collection.