Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp, circa 1925. Designed for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, in Paris.
Brass, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp, circa 1925. Designed for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, in Paris.
Brass, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Made in Germany, circa 1925.
Brass, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp, made in Germany, circa 1925.
Brass, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp, made in Germany, circa 1925.
Brass, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Germany, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Germany, circa 1925 Created for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.
Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Germany, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Germany, circa 1925 Created for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.
Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Germany, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, Germany, circa 1925 Created for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.
Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp, circa 1925. Designed for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, in Paris.
Brass, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp in Brass-Plated Nickel, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp in brass-plated nickel, circa 1925.
Brass
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Leuven, Vlaams Gewest
Brass table lamp designed by Marcel Breuer for the 1925 international exhibition of modern decorative and Industrial arts, Paris which was particularly important as it signalled the ...
Brass
Marcel Breuer Commemorative Desk Lamp
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Roma, Lazio
A brass desk lamp stamped "Exposition Paris 1925 Marcel Breuer".
Brass
Desk Lamp by Marcel Breuer Dated 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Isle Sur La Sorgue, Vaucluse
Wonderful desk lamp with beautiful, simple lines, in the Art Deco taste.
Marcel Breuer Brass Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer brass desk lamp, circa 1925. Created for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, in Paris.
Brass
Marcel Breuer Art Deco Desk Lamp 1925 Paris
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Tokyo, Tokyo
This very beautiful Art Deco desk lamp was designed by Marcel Breuer for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.
Brass
Marcel Breuer Art Deco Desk Lamp, 1925, Paris
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Tokyo, Tokyo
This very beautiful Art Deco desk lamp was designed by Marcel Breuer for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.
Brass
Bauhaus Desk Lamp Signed Marcel Breuer Exposition, Paris, 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Morazzone, Varese
This beautiful desk lamp comes from the series of lamps designed from Marcel Breuer, which were presented during the exhibition in Paris in 1925.
Nickel
Sold
H 17.72 in W 5.91 in D 7.88 in
Modernist desk lamp after a Bauhaus design by Marcel Breuer, 1970s
By Marcel Breuer
Located in EVERDINGEN, NL
A modernist brass Bauhaus style lamp, often attributed to, but certainly inspired by the Bauhaus designs in general and this particular design is often attributed to Marcel Breuer. T...
Brass
Marcel Breuer, Nickel-Plated Brass and Granit Lamp, 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Saint-Ouen, FR
Marcel Breuer, signed and numbered. Bahaus desk lamp in nickel plated brass with a rectangular base decorated with three square-section sticks forming a rectangle centered by blac...
Granite, Brass
Sold
H 19 in W 4.75 in D 11.5 in
Bauhaus Marcel Breuer Lamps circa 1925 Engraved 100/12 + 100/31 Table/Desk Light
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Torrance, CA
Authentic Marcel Breuer lamps, circa 1925 circa 1925 engraved 100/12 + 100/31 Designed for the international exposition of modern industrial decorative arts, Paris. Composed of...
Brass
Modernist desk lamp after a Bauhaus design, 1970s
By Marcel Breuer
Located in EVERDINGEN, NL
A modernist brass Bauhaus style lamp, often attributed to, but certainly inspired by the Bauhaus designs in general and this particular design is often attributed to Marcel Breuer. T...
Brass
Minimalist nickel plated desk lamp with cocoon shade, Netherlands 1930s
By Achille & Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Marcel Breuer
Located in ECHT, NL
Modernist desk or table lamp. The base is made from a single piece of nickel plated tube. The socket is adjustable in angle and rotatable. Fitted with a cocoon shade in the style of ...
Metal, Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Marcel Breuer desk lamp, circa 1925 Created for the international exposition of modern industrial and decorative arts in Paris.
Nickel
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp in Brass Plated Nickel, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Culver City, CA
Stamped "Exposition Paris 1925"
Brass
Marcel Breuer Art Deco Desk Lamp, 1925, Paris
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Tokyo, Tokyo
This very beautiful Art Deco desk lamp was designed by Marcel Breuer for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris.
Brass
Bauhaus Brass Desk or Table Lamp by Marcel Breuer, 1925, Marked
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Morazzone, Varese
Beautiful shiny brass desk or table lamp designed by Marcel Breuer and manufactured before 1925 to be exposed during the exhibition in Paris 1925.
Brass
Sold
H 19.69 in W 14.97 in D 5.12 in
Brass Bauhaus Art Deco architectural desk or table lamp attributed Marcel Breuer
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Zaandam, NL
Gorgeous example of a Bauhaus desk lamp with the design attributed to Marcel Breuer.
Brass
Marcel Breuer Desk Lamp, circa 1925
By Marcel Breuer
Located in Pambio Noranco, CH
Designed for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, in Paris. Composed of brass plated nickel and stamped “Exposition Paris 1925”.
Brass
The architect and designer Marcel Breuer was one the 20th century’s most influential and innovative adherents of modernism. A member of the Bauhaus faculty, Breuer — like such colleagues as the architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the artists and art theoreticians László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers — left Europe in the 1930s to champion the new design philosophy and its practice in the United States.
Born in Hungary, Breuer became a Bauhaus student in 1920 and quickly impressed Gropius, the German school’s founder, with his aptitude for furniture design. His early work was influenced by the minimalist Dutch design movement De Stijl — in particular the work of architect Gerrit Rietveld.
In 1925, while he was head of the Bauhaus furniture workshop, Breuer realized his signature innovation: the use of lightweight tubular-steel frames for chairs, tables and sofas — a technique soon adopted by Mies and others. Breuer’s attention gradually shifted from design to architecture, and, at the urging of Gropius, he joined his mentor in 1937 on the faculty of Harvard and in an architectural practice.
In the 1940s, Breuer opened his own architectural office, and there his style evolved from geometric, glass-walled structures toward a kind of hybrid architecture — seen in numerous Breuer houses in New England — that pairs bases of local fieldstone with sleek, wood-framed modernist upper floors. In his later, larger commissions, Breuer worked chiefly with reinforced concrete and stone, as seen in his best-known design, the brutalist inverted ziggurat built in New York in 1966 as the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Breuer’s most famous furniture pieces are those made of tubular steel, which include the Wassily chair — named after Wassily Kandinsky and recognizable for its leather-strap seating supports — and the caned Cesca chair.
Breuer also made several notable designs in molded plywood, including a chaise and nesting table for the British firm Isokon and a student furniture suite commissioned in 1938 for a dormitory at Bryn Mawr College. Whether in metal or wood, Breuer’s design objects are elegant and adaptable examples of classic modernist design — useful and appropriate in any environment.
Find vintage Marcel Breuer seating, storage cabinets and lighting on 1stDibs.
Antique table lamps became a category of their own once electricity moved light off the wall and onto furniture. The form split quickly: task-driven designs like the Anglepoise on one side, decorative ceramic and glass on the other.
Styles to Know
Base material shapes the light as much as the shade does: ceramic and glass diffuse a softer glow, while brass and metal read more directional. Layer the look with a mid-century modern floor lamp for ambient light, or set a pair on a mid-century modern nightstand for a bedroom.
How to Choose the Right Vintage Table Lamp
Buying individually rather than as a pair allows more flexibility when mixing eras across a room. For those shopping by name rather than by shape, the history of the Anglepoise lamp is worth a read. Each piece comes from a vetted 1stDibs seller, with era, designer and condition detailed, and the 1stDibs Promise stands behind every purchase.