Ingo Maurer

'Ingo Maurer

Ingo Maurer makes lighting feel like a discovery. No matter how familiar or even plain a fixture's parts, it throws an emotional switch to "On." How else to explain the instantaneous delight in Lucellino? (His signature winged lightbulb.) Then there's the mischievous mirth triggered by Porca Miseria! (A chandelier made of exploding crockery.)

Maurer has a knack for tapping into deep resonances with the most elusive of materials: light.This ability may well have sprung from his early experiences. As a country boy, he was mesmerized by the play of sunlight on Germany's Lake Constance, where his father was a fisherman and an inventor. This fascination developed quickly into a talent for designing witty, sophisticated objects...'

Text Julie V. Iovine
Section SUPPLEMENT; Hall of Fame; Pg. 16
Date December 1, 2007
Source Interior Design Magazine

I saw this piece recently in the Museum of Modern Art which took me by surprise. The sense of movement and explosion is very dramatic. I have included a more "narrative" description than my own.

Designer Ingo Maurer
Location The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photograph Amir Daoud

'Made-Over MoMA Rearranges The Furniture, And the Attitude

...None is more spectacular than a chandelier of broken porcelain and cutlery caught in mid-explosion. The piece, "Porca Miseria!," was created by German lighting designer Ingo Maurer in 1994 as a humorous expression of anger. (The name means "Damn It!") It remains a superb example of how poetry can creep into the industrial process, even if plates and teacups are broken by hand with a jeweler's hammer. But viewed through the prism of Sept. 11, 2001, Maurer conveys something frighteningly modern: the fragility of normal life...'

Text Linda Hales
Section Style; C01
Date October 30, 2004
Source The Washington Post