ADB SP.5 Belgian Theatre Spotlight Floor Lamp | 1960s 500W Stage Light on Ertel-Werk Bundeswehr Field Tripod

A mid-sized ADB theatre spotlight from Belgium, the SP.5, built in the 1960s around a 500 watt lamp, the working horse of ADB's range between its smaller units and the large SP.1000. Here it stands on a folding German army field tripod made by Ertel-Werk of Munich, giving a piece of Belgian stage equipment an entirely unexpected second career.

At a glance

The story

The company behind this spotlight, ADB, began in 1920 in Zaventem, Belgium, when Adrien De Backer put his own initials on a business making rheostats for laboratory use. Theatre came later, and stayed for good: ADB's first light dimmer, built for the city theatre in Mechelen, reportedly ran without failure for more than forty years, and by 1938 the company had moved into building spotlights of its own. From there ADB became one of the names European theatres, concert halls, and broadcast studios relied on for decades, staying under the De Backer family's control until Siemens bought the business in 1987. The lighting technology lives on today under the Clay Paky group.

The SP.5 sat in the middle of ADB's spotlight range, a 500 watt fixture built for stages that needed real output without the bulk of the company's largest units. This example still carries its original patina, worn honestly rather than restored away, and the beam-adjustment knob on the back of the housing still does exactly what it was designed for, shifting the beam from a tight spot to a wide flood at a turn.

Its tripod is a different kind of object altogether. Ertel-Werk of Munich traced its own history back to 1802, to a precision workshop founded by Georg von Reichenbach and later carried on under Traugott Ertel's name, building astronomical and surveying instruments prized for their exactness for well over a hundred years. That reputation for precision was serious enough that the company was called on during the Second World War to produce components for the Enigma cipher machine, before its production turned fully toward the war effort. This folding wooden field tripod, issued to the German Bundeswehr, comes from that same tradition of exacting, purpose-built engineering, just aimed at carrying optical equipment across open terrain rather than sitting on a workshop bench. No one at either company ever intended this pairing, a Belgian stage light on a German army survey stand, but the proportions and character work together better than that mismatched history suggests.

The spotlight has been fully rewired for safe use at home or in a studio, fitted with an E27 socket, an inline switch, an EU plug, and roughly 3 metres of cable, so it runs on any standard LED or incandescent bulb, the one shown in the photographs is included.

Suited to collectors of theatrical and industrial lighting history, interior designers looking for a fully adjustable statement piece with real mechanical substance, and anyone furnishing a loft, studio, office, or living space where two unrelated engineering traditions meeting in one object earns its place.