Serge Mouille: the sculptor of light

Serge Mouille was a silversmith by training. In 1953, the decorator Jacques Adnet asked him to design a lamp — and in barely a decade Mouille produced one of the most concentrated, original bodies of work in the history of lighting.

He worked almost entirely in black lacquered steel, drawing shades shaped like breasts, eyes and insects. The arms pivot; the shades tilt. A Mouille lamp is not a fixed object but an instrument you aim by hand.

Drawing with steel

The forms look effortless and are anything but. Mouille bent, welded and lacquered each piece himself, refusing industrial production and making only small numbers. The Museum of Modern Art collected his work almost immediately; period originals now sell at auction for the price of a car.

The arms pivot, the shades tilt — a Mouille lamp is an instrument you aim by hand.

Organic modernism

Where his contemporaries chased the machine, Mouille looked to the body and the insect. The one- and three-arm floor lamps reach like limbs; the ‘spider’ ceiling lights splay like legs; the Œil watches from the wall. It is modernism with a pulse.

Original, and made again

Today the lamps are made again by hand in the Aisne, in France, to Mouille's own drawings — each numbered and issued with a certificate of authenticity. That certificate matters: few designs are as heavily replicated. Objena brings these editions to Australia — the craft, not the copy.