Marianne Brandt

Marianne Brandt joined the Bauhaus metal workshop in Weimar in 1924 and later ran it — the only woman to lead the department.

Her lamps are built from the plainest geometry available: an opal glass sphere, a metal rod, a ceiling plate. The DMB 26 pendant of 1926 is little more than that, and the HMB 29 of 1928 sets two glass spheres of different sizes against each other, one frosted and one glossy.

She also designed for the lighting manufacturer Kandem, work that reached ordinary households in large numbers and is among the clearest cases of Bauhaus ideas arriving in mass production.