EB 27 Table, Floor, Wall or EB 28: Which Buquet Lamp

Four lamps in the TECNOLUMEN range descend from a single 1927 patent, and choosing between them is mostly a question of where you need the light to arrive. The EB 27 table lamp, the EB 27 StL floor version, the EB 27 WL wall model and the smaller EB 28 share one mechanism but not one footprint. This piece sets their measurements side by side and says which room each one suits.

One patent, four bodies

Édouard-Wilfrid Buquet patented the flexible joints of his articulated lamp on 9 February 1927, in a Paris that was still working out what electric task lighting should look like. His answer was mechanical rather than decorative: a double arm carrying a bell-shaped reflector at one end and a weight at the other, pivoting at joints that let the whole assembly hold almost any position without screws or clamps. While the Bauhaus was rethinking lighting in Germany, Buquet reached a strikingly similar conclusion from the workshop side, and his lamp found its way onto the desks of leading architects and designers of the late 1920s.

The versions made today come from TECNOLUMEN of Bremen, the German manufactory founded in 1979 by Walter Schnepel, whose first project was returning Wilhelm Wagenfeld's Bauhaus table lamp of 1923–24 to production. The house preserves Buquet's geometry and double-arm design and updates only the internal mechanics and the electrical components. Every lamp leaves Bremen consecutively numbered and carrying the TECNOLUMEN mark, which is how provenance is recorded on these re-editions rather than a decorative flourish.

How the counterweighted arm behaves

The point worth understanding before you compare sizes is that nothing here is sprung. A spring-balanced task lamp stores tension and gives it back, which is why those arms drift downward as the spring tires. Buquet's system balances weight against weight instead. Move the reflector and the counterweight moves with it, the joints take only the small residual load, and the arm stays where your hand left it. Adjustment is quiet, needs one hand, and does not involve tightening anything.

The construction is the same across the family: nickel-plated brass, aluminium and lacquered wood, with a bell-shaped nickel-plated metal shade on the movable arm. The shade throws a focused pool of light downward rather than filling a room, so each of these lamps behaves as a task light first. That is worth remembering when you plan the rest of the lighting around one.

The four Buquet lamps compared

All four carry the same designer credit, the same 1927 origin and the same handcrafted materials. The differences that matter are mounting, envelope and how far the reflector travels.

Reach, height and the surface each one needs

The EB 27 Buquet Table Lamp is the full-scale original. Articulated, it stands up to 1200 mm high and reaches up to 1000 mm in depth, which means it can light a desk from behind a monitor or lean over a drawing without the base moving. The base is Ø 160 mm and the cable is 2.5 m. Give it a desk with real depth: on a shallow console the arm will want more room than the surface offers.

The EB 28 Buquet Table Lamp is the compact reading of the same idea, at 755 x 850 x 755 mm on the same Ø 160 mm base, with a smaller reflector and a matt silver- or nickel-plated brass finish. It asks for less depth and less headroom, which makes it the easier fit on a bedside table, a hallway console or a desk that already carries a screen. If your surface is under a metre deep, this is usually the version that behaves.

The EB 27 StL Buquet Floor Lamp lifts the mechanism onto a slender metal stand that also houses the transformer. At 1000 x 1200 x 1000 mm with a Ø 160 mm base and a 2.5 m cable, it delivers the same 1000 mm of travel without occupying any tabletop at all. Pull it beside a reading chair and the reflector swings over the page; push it behind an armrest and the slim column claims almost no floor. This is the version for rooms where every table is already spoken for.

The EB 27 WL Buquet Wall Lamp is the most space-saving of the four. The counterweighted arm is mounted on a wall bracket and projects up to 1000 mm into the room, so it can replace a bedside lamp outright or serve a narrow desk without landing on the worktop. Mount it at a height where the reflector clears your head when the arm is folded back, and plan the position before the bracket goes in, because the swing is generous and the wall fixing is not something you want to move twice.

Which one belongs in your room

Work backwards from the surface. If you have a deep desk and want one lamp to do everything, the EB 27 table version is the reference piece and the one closest to what Buquet drew. If the surface is shallow or shared, the EB 28 keeps the same mechanism in an envelope that leaves room for a laptop and a notebook. If there is no surface to spare, choose between floor and wall: the StL is movable and needs about a square metre of floor near the chair, while the WL needs none at all but commits you to a fixed point on the wall.

Finish is the remaining decision, and it is quieter than it sounds. Silver or nickel plating over brass reads warm and slightly industrial under a warm lamp, and the matt version on the EB 28 reflects less of the room back at you. All four are handcrafted, consecutively numbered and marked in Bremen, so the choice is about geometry rather than quality. Because the light is focused, each pairs well with a softer ambient source overhead, a point covered further in our guide to designer lighting for small apartments.

See the full TECNOLUMEN collection for the rest of the Bremen range, including the Wagenfeld lamps that started the house in 1979.