Satin White Rouleau

Design Frères is an eclectic furniture line designed by Eric Thévenot, owner of Blend Interiors, an exceptional California-based dealer of vintage and contemporary furniture and decor. 

Known for synthesizing divergent styles and peppering worldly spaces he creates with works stemming from varying origins and periods, Thévenot is a consummate decorator, and the chairs, tables, case pieces and other furnishings that comprise his Design Frères collection are sophisticated additions to any interior.

Originally from France, Thévenot opened Blend Interiors in Los Angeles in 2005. While the company offers a range of furniture and decorative objects from all over the world — most of which are sourced from its founder’s purchasing trips in Paris — Blend Interiors also offers art advising services and interior design consulting. And the exclusive furnishings he is creating and manufacturing for the Design Fréres collection are part of this endeavor to provide clients with a provocative fusion of design. 

"I believe in mixing periods: Saarinen chairs in a French chateau, Louis XVI armoires in a futuristic pad," Thévenot has said. “I like pulling things out of different time periods and re-creating them for today’s lifestyle.”

Building on Blend Interior’s success, Design Frères was established in 2010 and is a growing venture. 

Given the broad-ranging tastes and concepts at the core of Blend Interiors, it is appropriate that the Design Frères line is so diverse and interesting — the collection features Art Deco-style end tables topped with travertine and stylish counter stools with handwoven rush seats and slender frames of powder-coated steel. Elsewhere, Thévenot’s white oak shelving systems feature chic space elements and draw on the legendary mid-century modernist storage solutions designed by the likes of Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, with each piece pairing nicely with the vintage European treasures that Thévenot is prone to acquire on his next trip to Paris.

On 1stDibs, find Design Frères tables, seating and lighting.

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.

Well-crafted antique and vintage table lamps do more than provide light; the right fixture-and-table combination can add a focal point or creative element to any interior.

Proper table lamps have long been used for lighting our most intimate spaces. Perfect for lighting your nightstand or reading nook, table lamps play an integral role in styling an inviting room. In the years before electricity, lamps used oil. Today, a rewired 19th-century vintage lamp can still provide a touch of elegance for a study.

After industrial milestones such as mass production took hold in the Victorian era, various design movements sought to bring craftsmanship and innovation back to this indispensable household item. Lighting designers affiliated with Art Deco, which originated in the glamorous roaring ’20s, sought to celebrate modern life by fusing modern metals with dark woods and dazzling colors in the fixtures of the era. The geometric shapes and gilded details of vintage Art Deco table lamps provide an air of luxury and sophistication that never goes out of style.

After launching in 1934, Anglepoise lamps soon became a favorite among modernist architects and designers, who interpreted the fixture as “a machine for lighting,” just as Le Corbusier had reimagined the house as “a machine for living in.” The popular task light owed to a collaboration between a vehicle-suspension engineer by the name of George Carwardine and a West Midlands springs manufacturer, Herbert Terry & Sons. 

Some mid-century modern table lamps, particularly those created by the likes of Joe Colombo and the legendary lighting artisans at Fontana Arte, bear all the provocative hallmarks associated with Space Age design. Sculptural and versatile, the Louis Poulsen table lamps of that period were revolutionary for their time and still seem innovative today. 

If you are looking for something more contemporary, industrial table lamps are demonstrative of a newly chic style that isn’t afraid to pay homage to the past. They look particularly at home in any rustic loft space amid exposed brick and steel beams.

Before you buy a desk lamp or table lamp for your living room, consider your lighting needs. The Snoopy lamp, designed in 1967, or any other “banker’s lamp” (shorthand for the Emeralite desk lamps patented by H.G. McFaddin and Company), provides light at a downward angle that is perfect for writing, while the Fontana table lamp and the beloved Grasshopper lamp by Greta Magnusson-Grossman each yield a soft and even glow. Some table lamps require lampshades to be bought separately.

Whether it’s a classic antique Tiffany table lamp, a Murano glass table lamp or even a bold avant-garde fixture custom-made by a contemporary design firm, the right table lamp can completely transform a room. Find the right one for you on 1stDibs.