Midcentury Pendant "Wave" by Koch and Lowy for Peill & Putzler, 1960s

Transforming light manufacturing into an aesthetic art form, Peill & Putzler is synonymous with futuristic globular glassworks. It was a massive operation at the peak of its production, creating mid-century modern designs and employing up to 1,500 workers. Its table lamps, wall lights and chandeliers and pendants are anything but mundane and are admired today for their innovative artistry.

The melding of two great, independent glassworks companies in 1947 to form Peill & Putzler occurred at the beginning of a postwar design surge. Peill und Sohn, founded in 1903, was led by Leopold Peill, a philanthropist and glassmaker. Originally from Pieńsk in today’s Poland, the Putzler brothers were well-established glass producers known for kerosene street lighting. The synthesis of the two companies established the renowned glassworks and a lighting company. The site of its glassworks factory in Düren, Germany, became the home of this integrated partnership.

In 1953, the German Design Council was formed, with Peill & Putzler as a founding member. The council is essential today, bringing social awareness, support and knowledge transfer to design companies and providing beneficial tools for their success. 

Heading the company at this time were Günther Peill and Hans Ahrenkiel. The pair were experimental with the designs the company produced. Advancing technologies supported industrial production, allowing the company to manufacture pieces that were as much art as functional objects.

Designers of note who worked with Peill & Putzler and contributed to its acclaim included Aloys Ferdinand Gangkofner, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Helmut Demary, William Brown, Horst Tüselmann and Wilhelm Braun-Feldweg. Collaboratively, they produced stunning flush mount lighting, candle holders and vases and vessels.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage Peill & Putzler lighting, decorative objects, glass and more.

Collectors know Koch & Lowy for its eye-catching sold brass five-arm chandeliers, sleek chrome swing-arm floor lamps and clever table lamps with marble bases. With a wide range of sculptural mid-century modern and 1970s-era fixtures created by the likes of George Nelson, Karl Springer, Piotr Sierakowski and others, the American lighting manufacturer elevated the design of furniture and home decor from the postwar era onward.

Ernest Lowy founded Koch & Lowy in New York in 1946, initially running the firm with his son, Thomas. Over the years, collaborations with notable designers such as American artist Neal Small — known as the “Prince of Plastic” for his innovative use of Plexiglas and Lucite — yielded iconic pieces such as Koch & Lowy’s biomorphic, clear-glass pendant lights and wall sconces for German manufacturer Peill and Putzler as well as the rare Half Nelson table lamp. 

Created by George Nelson — an architect, journalist and designer who brought a slew of legendary designers to Herman Miller while he was director of design at the company — the Half Nelson table lamp, with its striking form and shade of spun aluminum, was originally designed in 1950 as part of an architectural project of Nelson’s on Long Island. Koch & Lowy put it into production in the late 1970s. 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Koch & Lowy floor lamps gained wide acclaim. Neal Small’s architectural aluminum periscope Skyscraper floor lamp and their Pharmacy tent floor lamp, which Thomas Lowy admitted he copied unwittingly from Omaha architect Cedric Hartman, were particularly popular.

“I’d bought a tent [lamp] in Italy, but it had been made so badly that I decided to make a better one,” Lowy explained to the New York Times in 1976. “I didn’t know that the Italian one wasn’t original. I didn’t know it was a copy of Hartman’s design.”

Nevertheless, Koch & Lowy enjoyed success designing and producing innovative lighting fixtures and other furniture such as the brutalist Mirage coffee table, created by Polish designer and head of Koch & Lowy’s design department, Piotr Sierakowski.

While Thomas Lowy sold the company in the 1990s, the brand’s impact on modernist lighting design endures.

On 1stDibs, find a range of vintage Koch & Lowy lighting and tables.