As early as in the 1920s, Josef Frank began designing lamps for his own interior design company Haus und Garten, which he started together with his architect colleague Oskar Wlach. A decade later, when he moved to Sweden in 1933, he brought some of his first sketches with him to Svenskt Tenn. One of them was the so-called “Spider lamp”, which still hangs in Villa Beer, one of the private homes that Josef Frank designed in Vienna.
The “Spider lamp” is a nickname that refers to ceiling lamp 2358 with eight arms, ceiling lamp 2356 with six arms and ceiling lamp 2353 with three arms. All of them are characterized by the naked, visible light bulbs – a wink to the Art Nouveau era and the birth of the electric lamp.
Until the 1910s, the kerosene lamp was the standard lighting in both simple and finer homes in Sweden, and it was only later that the light bulb became a common feature. Early designed ceiling lamps are often characterized by exposed light bulbs, as it was a way to show modern features in the interior. Josef Frank's Spindee lamps are examples of such lamps, and so are the light bulbs that hang in the stairwell at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm. When the palace was built in 1903 – 1905, it was provided with modern innovations such as electricity and central heating, and the light bulbs were one of the modern choices made by the architect Ferdinand Boberg.
