Christian Dell

Christian Dell was born and raised in Offenbach am Main in Hesse. He studied silver forging from 1907 and completed it in 1911. He studied at Saxon college of arts and crafts in Weimar for a year and worked as a foreman of the metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar. He also made his name at Frankfurt art school and changed it to Staedelschule in 1926. During World War II, a group of Nazi workers did not allow him to stay there in 1933, Walter gropius a german architect pioneering in modernist architecture offered him a job in the United States. Dell chose to remain in Germany and worked for Kaiser & Co. His career jumpstarted beginning of 1926, Dell sketched lights and lamps at first for the New Frankfurt-project. As an early industrial designer and pioneer of plastic design, he used bakelite and amino plastics as materials for his work for Molitor-Zweckleuchten in 1929-1930. His work stood out from his designs such as Rondella (1927-28) and Polo Popular (1929) desk lights. The Dell-lamp type K (1930) as well as Kaiser idell range (1930’s). Majority of his designs appeared for the first time in catalogue in 1936 and was produced by the company Gebr. Kaiser & Co in Neheim-Husten.