Large Brass Wall Lamps, Germany, 1980s

Long, low and gleaming, these Mid-Century Modern wall sconces were made in West Germany in the 1980s in polished brass. Each one reaches out on a slim swing arm and ends in an angled brass shade, like a small roof folded from a single sheet of metal, and each carries the words Made in West Germany on the inside.

They belong to a moment when German lighting returned to the clean geometry of the postwar decades and gave it the warm, golden shine of the 1980s. The form borrows from the old library and picture light, a hood that sends the light down and away from the eye, here pared back to a crisp prism with a softly rounded crown. A hinged knuckle at the wall plate lets the arm swing, so the light goes where you want it rather than where the wall decides.

The brass has a mellow glow, with scratches and small marks from years of use that give it the depth of a well-handled object. Inside, the shades are white, so the light falls clean and bright beneath them while the outside stays warm and honeyed. Picture them on either side of a bed, swung in for one more chapter, or above a reading chair or a long run of bookshelves, where the brass catches the lamplight long after dark.