The Enduring Appeal of Ingo Maurer’s Golden Ribbon

“I didn’t want to offend Gaudí’s spirit,” said the late German industrial designer Ingo Maurer, when he was commissioned, in 1997, to dream up a light for Casa Botines, a fortress-like 1890s building in León, Spain, by Modernism master Antoni Gaudí. He had a solution: “Another floating ribbon! I chose the color gold because it seemed to me the most suitable for the materialization of light. It is more than a luminous object; it has become a work of art even without intention.”

The fixture in the library of an Edwin Lutyens English manor, designed by Robert Couturier.

Photo: Tim Beddow

Maurer, at work.

Photo: © Ingo Maurer

Maurer said “another,” because he had already created one such surrealistic fixture three years earlier for the foyer of a performing arts center in Tel Aviv. The piece, which is made to order, is comprised of two layers of aluminum, hand-sculpted by craftsmen who specialize in collectible automobiles and airplanes, then coated with gold leaf. The results resemble a bit of trimming caught in the wind.

“It looks like a ribbon that is floating, which is very much in line with how we think of objects,” explains Axel Schmid, head of product and project design at Ingo Maurer. “Because, of course, we work with things that illuminate, but they’re also light in the sense that they’re weightless.” He estimates the studio has made about one per year since that original, many of them landing Stateside, like the piece that hovers uncannily in the dining room of a Manhattan home by architect Steven Harris and designer Lucien Rees Roberts.

A Manhattan town house by architect Steven Harris and designer Lucien Rees Roberts.

Photo: Scott Frances/Otto

While decorating Marshcourt, an early-1900s house by Edwin Lutyens outside of London, Robert Couturier spotted a Golden Ribbon at auction that would perfectly suit the library. At more than 25 feet long it was, in his words, “a nail-biter,” to say the least. But, as luck would have it, suspended there, via cords attached from the floor above so as not to damage the intricate plasterwork ceiling, it was the perfect bit of poetry. “It made the room very contemporary,” he explains. “And that was the point of the exercise—to give the room a jolt that brought the Lutyens house into the 21st century.” ingo-maurer.com

Ingo Maurer’s Golden Ribbon is featured in AD’s May issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.