Designed in 1954, the Bagdad Lamp embodied the quintessential characteristics of Mathieu Matégot’s approach to lighting design: playful expression, signature material, and space-age aesthetic. Now, 70 years later, GUBI has reimagined the iconic lamp as a new portable version that brings the Hungarian designer’s offbeat style and technical brilliance to both indoor and outdoor settings.
‘The Bagdad Portable Lamp is a wonderfully sculptural design that perfectly encapsulates Matégot’s material genius and forward-looking aesthetic. Even though it was designed seven decades ago, it could have been made yesterday. We’re thrilled to bring this lighting masterpiece to a new audience and a new century, in a new compact form with the enhanced possibilities of portability.’
– Marie Kristine Schmidt, Chief Brand Officer, GUBI
Made with Matégot’s signature ‘rigitulle’ technique, whereby sheet metal is folded and perforated to create a lace-like effect – the Bagdad Lamp was inspired by the lanterns of the Middle East, hence its name. Matégot gave this classic style a distinctly futurist makeover, shaping a rigitulle sheet into an icosahedron – a geometric shape with 20 triangular sides – with an exaggerated pyramidal ‘tail’. As a result, the Bagdad resembles a cubist sculpture of a comet – thematically linking it to Matégot’s Satellite Lamp, another cosmically inspired design produced by GUBI. Of all his designs in rigitulle, the Bagdad Lamp is perhaps the most technically demanding, representing the pinnacle of Matégot’s achievements in folded metal.
GUBI’s new, portable edition of the lamp scales the Bagdad down to half the size of the 1954 table lamp. The smaller size of the ‘tail’ enables it to be used as a handle, making it easier to move the lamp around and outside the home – to whichever dark corner might benefit from its atmospheric glow.
The lamp’s shade is formed from three pieces of folded steel, carefully welded together to create the icosahedral form. Each of the Bagdad’s triangular sides is designed to serve as a base and support the weight of the lamp, so it can be positioned both vertically and at a variety of different angles, creating a new expression with each orientation.
