Strand Electric Patt 45 Theatre Spotlight Floor Lamp | 1960s British Stage Light on Ertel-Werk Bundeswehr Tripod

A green-patinated Strand Electric Patt 45, one of the most recognisable names in British stage lighting, standing on a German army field tripod from Munich's Ertel-Werk. Two countries, two industries, one striking floor lamp.

At a glance

The story

Strand Electric began in 1914, when two London theatre electricians, Arthur Earnshaw and Phillip Sheridan, set up shop in the city's West End. The company grew steadily over the following decades, but it was the arrival of Frederick Bentham in 1932 that changed its direction, his designs went on to define British theatre lighting for the rest of the century. Strand's Pattern 23, launched in 1953, became the world's first mass-produced theatre spotlight, and the company continued supplying fixtures and controls to theatres, television studios, and concert halls across Britain and beyond. It was bought by the Rank Organisation in 1968 and continued for decades afterward as Rank Strand, remaining one of the industry's leading names throughout.

The Patt 45 arrived in 1960 as a straightforward, hard-working member of that lineup: a 500 watt Fresnel spotlight built from mild steel at Strand's Covent Garden factory, fitted with a short-focus lens for a soft-edged beam, and designed to be practical rather than decorative. It stayed in production until 1978, when it was succeeded by the Patt 833, and in that time it lit stages across Britain for close to two decades of steady, unglamorous service. This particular example carries an original green patina built up over exactly that kind of working life, a finish no restoration could recreate convincingly because it was earned one production at a time.

The tripod underneath it comes from a completely different world. Ertel-Werk of Munich traced its own history back to 1802 and a precision workshop founded by Georg von Reichenbach, later continued under Traugott Ertel's name, and for more than a century the company built astronomical and surveying instruments known across Germany for their accuracy. That same precision made Ertel-Werk useful to the war effort during the Second World War, when it was called on to manufacture components for the Enigma cipher machine, before turning fully to wartime production. This folding wooden field tripod, issued to the postwar German Bundeswehr, carries that same tradition of purpose-built engineering, just aimed at optical equipment in the field rather than instruments on a workbench. Neither company ever intended a British stage light to end up on a German army survey stand, but the proportions suit each other far better than that unlikely pairing would suggest.

The spotlight has been fully rewired for safe home or studio use, fitted with an E27 socket, a switch, a plug, and roughly 3 metres of cable, so it accepts any standard LED or incandescent bulb. The one shown in the photographs is included. The barndoors that come with this piece are a later, non-original addition, useful for shaping the light and easy to remove if you prefer the Patt 45's cleaner original lines.

Suited to collectors of British theatre and television lighting history, interior designers looking for a rugged, fully adjustable statement piece, and anyone furnishing a loft, studio, retail space, or living room who wants genuine stage history with an unexpected German twist underneath it.