The lamp that FLOS couldn’t have existed without.
There is a particular pleasure in owning a piece that sits at the origin of something much larger. This 1970s cocoon table lamp by Friedel Wauer for Goldkant Leuchten is exactly that.
Goldkant Leuchten was founded in 1946 — originally trading as Cocoon-Leuchten International — and it was their designer Fritz “Friedel” Wauer who is credited by FLOS with devising the technology of spraying polymer material onto iron frames, inspired by the self-wrapping of a silkworm. Hence the name. That single technical innovation changed lighting design permanently.
In the late 1950s, an Italian entrepreneur named Arturo Eisenkeil brought the technique from Germany to Italy, where it found its way to Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Tobia Scarpa, Ignazio Gardella, and Dino Gavina — and from there, FLOS was born. Every luminous cocoon shade you have ever admired in an Italian interior traces its lineage directly back to Wauer’s workshop in Wuppertal.
Which is precisely why this lamp belongs in a conversation about Italian vintage, even if it isn’t Italian itself.
What you are looking at
The shade on this piece is made using that same sprayed-fibre process — polymer applied over a formed metal armature, creating a skin that is at once structural and translucent. When lit, it casts the kind of diffused, warm glow that no modern LED panel has ever convincingly replicated. It is atmospheric in the truest sense: it changes the character of a room.
Goldkant were awarded two iF Design Awards for their cocoon lamps in 1974 — recognition that this was not novelty manufacturing but considered, award-winning industrial design. The company enjoyed decades of success before closing in 1994 , which means pieces like this one are finite.
Where it works
Don’t overthink the placement. A bedside table. The corner of a study. A console in a hallway that needs something to stop you in your tracks. The off-white of both the shade and the painted metal base means it reads as a neutral — it won’t fight your scheme, it will simply elevate it.
Many Goldkant designs are routinely mistaken for Castiglioni work , and honestly, that tells you everything about the quality of the design language. You are getting the origin story at a fraction of the price of the Italian imitators.
That seems like rather a good deal.
Available now.