Didier Teissonnière - La lampe Gras - 2008

An extremely rare and sought-after work devoted to the mythical Lampe Gras, an absolute reference in 20th-century industrial design. Written by Didier Teissonnière and published by Éditions Norma, this book has today become almost unattainable on the market, particularly in this condition, new, still in publisher’s cellophane.

A genuine collectible for design, architecture, and modernist furniture enthusiasts, La lampe Gras traces the fascinating history of the famous lamp created by Bernard-Albin Gras in 1921 and adopted by the greatest names of modernism such as Le Corbusier or Eileen Gray.

The volume is richly illustrated with period photographs, catalogs, archives, and emblematic models. Its rarity and documentary importance make it a highly sought-after book among international collectors of vintage and industrial design.

From the publisher:

Lampe Gras holds an unprecedented place in the history of lighting. Designed and manufactured in 1921, it inaugurates a new genre of lighting system whose aim is to satisfy both the world of industry and the booming tertiary sector. With variable geometry and easily adaptable to each person’s needs, Lampe Gras is capable of lighting, in the most efficient way, machine tools, drawing boards, desks, laboratories, and even the operating room of the ocean liner Île-de-France. Rejecting all ornamental affectation, its creator, engineer Bernard-Albin Gras, endowed it with an aesthetic that embodies the perfect match between intention and design, which underpins what we now call design. As such, its success was immediate, to the point of provoking interpretations and imitations, notably among Bauhaus members fascinated by this incunable of modernity. But it was Le Corbusier who lent it a particular aura, seeing in it, in his own words, a “tool-object,” reduced to its pure functionality, a “type-object” whose agency benefited from his practice as well as his architectural realizations. Following him, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Eileen Gray, Michel Roux-Spitz, Sonia Delaunay, Georges Braque, and so many other avant-garde figures contributed to its entry into legend. This prestigious career is matched by a more anonymous success in the world of work, exceptional in the volume of orders as well as in its duration. There is hardly another lamp that, without major modification, has been produced for more than half a century. After a few decades of eclipse, Lampe Gras regained notoriety among a new generation of architects, decorators, and collectors, fascinated by this object of early modernity on par with Le Corbusier’s furniture, Herbst, Prouvé, and Perriand. This volume traces the history of an invention and an industrial adventure, but it also aims to be a journey through the aesthetic choices of the interwar period and those, more eclectic, of the present time.