Lighting By Mydriaz

Specializing in decorative lighting, monumental installations and avant-garde brass furniture, Mydriaz has garnered worldwide recognition and acclaim for its functional sculptures that bridge the gap between tradition and innovation.

The company was founded in 2011 by Parisian designers Cyril Kaleka, Jennifer Midoz and Malo du Bouëtiez, whose focus was on creating elegant lighting and furniture by combining traditional manufacturing with contemporary techniques. Their daring and technically artistic pieces quickly captured the attention of French furniture designers and critics, and the trio won the Emerging Talent Award for Arts and Crafts presented by the Bureau Design Mode Métiers d’Art in 2013.

Today, Midoz and du Bouëtiez oversee the production of Mydriaz’s handmade pieces in the company’s Paris workshop. Brass is predominant in many of Mydriaz’s pieces, such as chandeliers and pendant lights, gueridons, coffee tables, armchairs and mirrors. However, the designers also incorporate high-quality materials like marble, textured, tinted and blown glass, fine woods, ceramics and textiles for furnishings that are distinctly modern. For instance, the cupcake-like Tabouret Merveilleux stool features a luxurious combination of enameled porcelain and brass, while the striking Ryu wall lamp marries warm golden-plated, polished brass with textured plaster.

Throughout the past decade, Mydriaz has collaborated with several notable artists and designers, such as Pierre Huyghe, Odile Soudant, Laurent Grasso and Martino Gamper, to name a few. Also, numerous publications, including Marie-Claire Maison, Elle Decoration, Architectural Digest and Maison & Jardin, have featured Mydriaz’s furniture and lighting.

Many of the brand's sophisticated pieces can be seen in the boutiques of luxury houses such as Yves Saint Laurent, Diane von Furstenberg and Cartier, as well as at Parisian destinations such as the Palais de Tokyo and Hôtel de la Marine.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of modern Mydriaz lighting, 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.