After training in Germany, Von Nessen came to the United States and established Nessen Studios in New York in 1927. He quickly earned a following among well-established modern architects, who commissioned him to design lighting and other household objects for their clients. He became one of the only major designers between the wars to concentrate on innovative lighting, and his popular table and floor lamps ended up in schools, hospitals, offices, and homes. Von Nessen was particularly influential in developing adjustable and indirect lighting, and he favored nontraditional materials like spun aluminum, Bakelite, and fiberglass, as well as chrome plating, which was only refined in the mid–1920s. His wife, Greta Von Nessen, was the daughter of a Swedish architect he had worked with. After her husband’s death, she revived Nessen Studios and produced celebrated designs of her own, notably the Anywhere Lamp (1951).

Gallery label from

Shaping Modernity: Design 1880-1980, December 23, 2009–July 25, 2010 .

Manufacturer Nessen Studio, Inc. (now Nessen Lamps, Inc.), New York
Medium Chrome-plated brass with baked enamel finish
Dimensions Adjustable h. 48 1/2" (123.2 cm) to 60 1/2" (153.7 cm)
Credit Gift of the manufacturer
Object number 452.1956
Department Architecture & Design

Explore more

All works by Walter Von Nessen →

From MoMA Design Store

Licensing

Artwork or archival images

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

Audio and film clips

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.

Text from a publication or the archives

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.