What happens to a cult of personality when that personality is gone? German lighting brand Ingo Maurer was forced to reckon with this question after its 87-year-old founder and namesake passed away in 2019. When Foscarini, the Veneto-based lighting brand headed up by Carlo Urbinati, purchased 90 per cent of the business in 2022, it began a new chapter for the Munich-based company, which for so long had been defined by Maurer’s larger-than-life persona.
Born into a family of fishermen on southern Germany’s Reichenau Island in Lake Constance, Maurer studied graphic design in Munich before spending several years in the US as a freelance designer. He returned to Germany in 1963 and founded his company three years later. His first design was appropriately foundational:
