Ingo Maurer

Ingo Maurer – a story of success since the mid 1960s

Ingo Maurer has designed and produced lamps and lighting systems with his eponymous company for more than 40 years. Over 70 individuals work together to create products that are a blend of artistic expression and functional elegance. Ingo Maurer products combine love of detail with manufacturing know-how and a lot of manual work.

The success story of designer Ingo Maurer and his company begins in the year 1965. In that year, he designed his first lamps for a customer and visited his first trade fair. The following year, Ingo Maurer led a one-man-company with temporary staff in basement rooms. The first lamp “Bulb” appeared then as a small series. Soon it found purchasers and imitators inside the country and abroad, becoming part of the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

In the following years, Ingo Maurer’s collections and customers began to grow. Traditional (classic) lamp-foot, lamp-screen lamps ensured the financial prerequisites to produce “modern” lamps. In 1968, Ingo Maurer employed three workers and was represented with his own presentation at an Italian exposition for the first time. The first press reports then followed. Between 1969 and 1972, the number of his employees rose to 12.

Ingo Maurer celebrated the 100th anniversary of the “Thomas Alva Edison” light bulb in 1979.

The Ingo Maurer Company employees 25 people, as well as temporary staff and home-workers. After Ingo Maurer began using Niedervolt technology with “Ilios” in 1983, he presented the Niedervolt system “YaYaHo” in September 1984 in Milan. At that moment, the company fought to survive because investments and development costs consumed financial reserves. The “YaYaHo” resonance exceeded the companies’ expectations leading to a unforeseen growth of the Ingo Maurer company in every area.

One year later, the “YaYaHo” work became to much for the 12 employees. Consequently, the Ingo Maurer Company experienced a new upturn. Expositions in Paris, Rome, Los Angeles, Helsinki, Barcelona, and Madrid followed after that.

The electronic Touch Tronic-Transformatos that was developed in the company allowed new concepts: the lamps switch on and off and dim simply by touch.

In 1989, Ingo Maurer showed non-commercial works in the Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain for the first time. The company grew again to 36 employees, supported by another ten part-time workers. In 1990, the project department was created. In the following years, the whole collection was supplemented by new designs and ideas.

Increasingly, the work developed in an artistic direction. In 1998, the new series “The MaMo Nouchies” was presented after several years of development. Since 1999, the Ingo Maurer team has also experimented in LED technology. In spring of that year, the Shop/Showroom was opened in New York.

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