Midgard Modular Steering Light

This desk lamp, adjustable via three joints, optionally equipped with a stand or a table clamp, comes from a series of lamps called Modular. This is formally based on the urtypische Midgard series of the 1920s and also has the Midgard-typical obliquely cut shades equipped with a rotary switch made of Duroplast. Original tools - spinning tools, pneumatic punches and presses - are still used in their manufacture.
A technical highlight are the joints, a patent by Curt Fischer from the 1930s. With them, the tension is regulated by spring steel washers. Because there is neither a screw nor a nut at the pivot point of the joints, they cannot "open" themselves or lose tension during use. The once set joint tension remains rather the whole lamp life over the same, which makes the lamp maintenance-free.

“Better work results, power savings, eye protection – all accounted for by Midgard’s adjustable turn-in lights.” Nothing less than that was the claim that the cover page of an old Midgard catalogue proclaimed full-bodied. Curt Fischer was behind the company founded in 1919 in the Thuringian city Auma. The engineer and designer held the world’s oldest patent for dirigible light and from the very beginning devoted a great deal of attention to every last component of each of his luminaires. In any case, his impulse to renew the traditional resulted in a mutual closeness to and sympathy with the Bauhaus avant-garde. In 1926, Midgard lamps, featuring the aesthetics of precise machines, unsurprisingly, were part of the furnishings of the newly erected Bauhaus building complex in Dessau. Decades later – after the company’s socialisation to “VEB Industrieleuchtenbau Auma” and the reprivatisation in the 1990s – Midgard’s long history ended in 2011 with insolvency. In 2017, however, David Einsiedler and Joke Rasch revived the traditional brand and set up a manufactory in Hamburg-Altona. Since then, production has remained there. And as before, it is still true: All Midgard luminaires are manufactured entirely in Germany.