Didier Teissonnière - La lampe Gras - 2008

An extremely rare and sought-after work dedicated to the mythical Lampe Gras, the absolute reference in twentieth-century industrial design. Written by Didier Teissonnière and published by Éditions Norma, this book has today become virtually unavailable on the market, especially in this condition, new, still in the publisher’s cellophane.

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

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

From the publisher:

La lampe Gras holds an unprecedented place in the history of lighting. Designed and manufactured in 1921, it inaugurates a new kind of lighting system whose aim is to satisfy both the industrial world and the booming tertiary sector. With variable geometry and easily adaptable to each person’s needs, the Lampe Gras is capable of illuminating in the most efficient way machine tools, drawing boards, offices, laboratories and even the operating room of the ocean liner Île-de-France. Rejecting any ornamental mannerism, its creator, engineer Bernard-Albin Gras, endowed it with an aesthetics that reflects the perfect match between design and drawing, which underpins what we today 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 gave it a particular aura, seeing in it, in his own words, an “object-tool,” reduced to its pure functionality, a “type object” of which he made use in his agency as well as in his architectural projects. 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 complemented by a more anonymous success in the world of work, exceptional by the volume of its orders and by its duration. There are few other lamps that, without major modification, have been produced for more than half a century. After a few decades of eclipse, the 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 book traces the history of an invention and an industrial adventure, but it also serves as a walk through the aesthetic choices of the interwar period and those, more eclectic, of the present time.