Egle Mieliauskiene On Sale

Egle Mieliauskiene is a Lithuanian furniture designer renowned for her striking creations, which are elegant and reliably functional. Her keen eye for detail and passion for form have made her one of the most innovative and successful designers to emerge from Lithuania in recent years.

Born in Vilnius in 1984, Mieliauskiene developed an early fascination with art. She received a master’s degree in visual arts from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, gaining a solid foundation in aesthetics and design principles. After working as an interior decorator collaborating with several high-end manufacturers on bespoke pieces, she launched Egli Design in 2010 in an effort to craft near-perfect furniture.

Mieliauskiene's groundbreaking furnishings are variously minimalist, figurative, fantastical, Neo Deco and classical. She favors natural materials, such as wood and leather, and designs her pieces with the human form in mind, prioritizing comfort and usability. Her work often incorporates unexpected elements, such as geometric shapes, anatomical appendages and unusual angles, which add a playful touch to her creations.

Each Egil Design piece is hand-made as a part of a limited series. Typically produced in editions totaling under eight, her small collections are prized for their inventive design and collected for their rarity. 

Mieliauskiene's creations have been exhibited at galleries, trade shows and design fairs worldwide. In addition to her work as a designer, Mieliauskiene is an accomplished artist, with an oeuvre that includes photography, painting, engraving, illustration and sculpture. Despite her success, Mieliauskiene remains committed to exploring new forms and materials and pushing the boundaries of design. 

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Egle Mieliauskiene case pieces, tables and seating.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.