RARE EMONS & SÖHNE RED-ON-BLACK ‘PETAL’ DÉCOR TABLE LAMP

A rarely seen table lamp in the red-on-black Petal décor designed by Hans Kraemer and Willi Hack for ES-Keramik in the late 1960s. It is presented here with a vintage, red, fiberglass shade. ES KERAMIK was founded in 1948 by Josef Emons (d. 1964) and his two sons—ES being an initialism for Emons & Söhne—in the town of Rheinbach near Bonn in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. That year saw the dissolution of Emons and then partner Jean Fuss’ terracotta business; Fuss & Emons had been formed in 1921 when the two men left employment with Klein & Schardt, the predecessor of Ruscha Keramik. Its output consisted of flower pots, ornamental ceramics, and eventually drainage pipes. With the start of WWII, production came to a near standstill—with the exception of inserts for the so-called “Hindenburg lights,” an important source of wartime emergency lighting. The full program was resumed as conditions normalized after the war, but the two men chose to go in different direc