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Robert Dudley Best (1892-1984) was heir to the world’s largest lighting manufacturing company Best & Lloyd, founded in Birmingham in 1840. Despite the company’s proud history of providing traditional lamps to a prestigious clientele, including Titanic and the Orient Express, Dudley Best was interested in a new collection that symbolised the spirit of the new age by appealing to the more avant-garde architects and setting a new agenda for lamp design.