A.E. Cremer Paris Blue Fresnel Theatre Spotlight Floor Lamp | 1950s Studio Light on Kern Aarau Surveyor's Tripod

A rare blue A.E. Cremer Paris theatre spotlight from the 1950s, complete with its original barndoors and ventilation tray, set here on a Swiss surveyor's tripod built by Kern of Aarau. Two national traditions of precision craftsmanship, French stage lighting and Swiss measuring instruments, standing together as one fully adjustable floor lamp.

At a glance

The story

André Cremer founded his workshop in Paris around 1920, and the business passed later to his son William, who ran it through its strongest decades. Across the 1950s, Cremer spotlights lit the great Parisian revues alongside film and television productions, at a moment when Paris was the centre of European stage and screen lighting. The company kept going until 1977, when it could no longer compete with the quartz-halogen "torch" projectors replacing Fresnel-lens designs across the industry, but its fixtures remain sought after by collectors, set designers, and lighting professionals to this day.

Colour is what sets this particular example apart. Most surviving Cremer units turn up in black, so the original blue hammered paint on this one, kept as found rather than restored to a false shine, makes it a genuinely uncommon find within an already collectible range. The housing carries the stamp Bté SGDG, short for "Breveté Sans Garantie du Gouvernement," a French legal patent marking used from 1844 until it was officially retired in 1968. It isn't a model designation but a mark of authentic period manufacture, confirming exactly when and how this fixture left the workshop.

At the heart of the fixture, the Fresnel lens works together with an adjustable fitting that slides the bulb closer to or further from the glass, letting the spotlight throw either a tight, focused beam or a soft, wide flood, controlled by the original knobs. The original barndoors, the hinged metal flaps once used to shape and direct light on stage, are still present and can stay in place for the full theatrical look or come off for a cleaner silhouette. The original ventilation tray has also survived, a small detail built to let heat escape safely during long hours under stage lighting, and one that rarely makes it through seventy years of use intact.

Tripod - Kern Aarau

The tripod carries a very different history. Kern & Co. was founded in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1819 by Jakob Kern, making it one of the oldest precision instrument makers in Europe, building the theodolites and drawing instruments used in major nineteenth and twentieth century engineering projects, including the surveying work behind the Simplon and Gotthard tunnels. In an odd twist of industry history, Heinrich Wild, the man who founded Kern's great rival Wild Heerbrugg, left his own company in 1932 and spent his final working years, from 1937 until his death in 1951, designing instruments for Kern instead. Kern eventually merged with Wild Heerbrugg in 1988 and closed for good in 1991. This wooden surveyor's tripod, built for the exacting demands of fieldwork, now gives a French stage light an entirely different kind of stability.

The spotlight has been rewired for safe home or studio use while keeping its original E27 fitting, fitted with a new inline switch, EU plug, and roughly 3 metres of cable, so it accepts any standard LED or incandescent bulb. The one shown in the photographs is included.

Suited to collectors of theatrical and cinema lighting history, interior designers and set decorators looking for a genuine, working piece of French stage history with a distinctive colour, and anyone furnishing a loft, studio, or living space who wants a large-scale lamp with real presence and a story to match.