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"To tell the truth, decorative art is about tools, beautiful tools."
Le Corbusier, Decorative Art of Today
The Gras lamp has a unique place in the history of lighting. Designed by Bernard-Albin Gras in 1921, it inaugurated a new type of lighting system.
The young Le Corbusier, passionate about the problem of light, adopted it and made it his own from the beginning of the 1920s. With remarkable functionality, this lamp also perfectly met his need to break away from decoration and ornament, which led the architect to integrate it in his workshop on rue de Sèvres in Paris as well as in his home, where it was used to illuminate both his work tables and the dining room table tops. He also introduced it into numerous projects: the villa Le Lac (Corseaux, Switzerland), the house La Roche (Paris), the house Guiette (Antwerp), the villa Savoye (Poissy), and the villa of his friend Eileen Gray in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
Based on period photographs, this work traces the story of an encounter between a remarkable invention – half industrial object, half design object – and one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. While retracing the history of the Gras lamp, its patents, its different models, it makes us rediscover, through the prism of this emblem of design, the interior designs of Le Corbusier, one of the main promoters of this lamp of modern times.
• 21 x 28 cm
• 120 pages
• 95 illustrations
• Canvas cover, with banner
• ISBN: 978-2-91554-2707
Text in French and English
DIDIER TEISSONNIÈRE est galeriste. Il fait partager sa passion pour les icônes de la modernité, qu’il s’agisse d’objets anonymes ou ceux dessinés par Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Charles et Ray Eames… Passionné par la lampe Gras dont il possède une collection unique, il est l’auteur de La Lampe Gras, Éditions Norma, 2008.
ARTHUR RÜEGG est professeur à l’École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich en Suisse. Spécialiste de Le Corbusier, il est notamment l’auteur de Le Corbusier. Meubles et intérieurs 1905-1965, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2012.
ANTOINE PICON enseigne l’histoire de l’architecture à Harvard. Ingénieur de formation, il est également directeur de recherches à l’École nationale des ponts et chaussées et président de la Fondation Le Corbusier.