Gallery Meubles et Lumières is proud to present its new exposition of the editor Verre Lumière,
comprising 40 different models - the fruit of many years of research and collection.
Verre Lumière is a French company created in 1968 by the master glass maker Max Ingrand (former
artistic director of Fontana Arte from 1954 to 1967), the company Mazda (affiliate of Thomson) and
the company Saint-Gobain (known for its long expertise in glass making).
Ben Swildens, a designer who was already well-known for his « egg lamp », edited by Fontana Arte,
was named artistic director of the new company. The commercial direction of Verre Lumière was
entrusted to Jacques Vidal, who would play a key role in this new venture, and with whom Max
Ingrand collaborated with 15 years prior during the construction of the ocean liner « France ». That
project, a symbol of French luxury, was surely a forerunner of the birth of Verre Lumière, which
would unite the French artisanal know-how with the modernity of its designers, thus representing
the essence of French creation which would spread throughout the world until the 1980’s.
The mission of the company was the creation and fabrication of contemporary lighting, often made
to measure. As a result of his training, Max Ingrand favoured the use of glass in his designs, for
example his famous lamp in opaline glass (model 1853) created in 1954, initially edited by Fontana
Arte then distributed by Verre Lumière. The technical specificity of opaline glass confers a soft and
homogenous diffusion of light and would become one of Verre Lumière’s signature materials, often associated with stainless steel, aluminum and brass.