This minimalist table lamp from Christofle’s “Christofle-Contemporain” collection reduces the object to pure geometry: a tall cylinder of mirror-polished silver plate set over a thick band of clear acrylic, resting on a stepped metal base. The polished column reflects its surroundings like a liquid surface. The translucent acrylic section, banded with a smoked gray stripe, breaks the solid mass and catches and refracts the light. The design has no ornament at all. Form, material and the play of light on metal carry the whole effect, making it as much a sculptural object as a source of light. It shows Christofle’s 1970s turn toward an industrial, architectural aesthetic, and it looks at home in a modernist interior as well as alongside Art Deco furniture.

In the late 1950s Christofle changed its approach to design. Albert Bouilhet joined his father in 1950 and became the firm’s general manager in 1958. The architect Henri Bouilhet joined the company in 1959. From then on, Christofle’s models were no longer entrusted to sculptors but to designers and architects. Echoing the Futurist ideal of objects “as beautiful as a factory,” the firm turned to functional forms and an industrial aesthetic. The aim was the end of ornament in favor of precise fabrication, pure form and the play of light on metal. The “Christofle-Contemporain” collection of 1970–1975, which included the “Mercury” tea service chosen by President Georges Pompidou for the presidential Caravelle aircraft, was the fullest expression of this approach.

Christofle was founded in Paris in 1830 by Charles Christofle and is best known for introducing electrolytic gilding and silver plating to France in 1842. Since 1935 its maker’s mark has been the chess knight flanked by the initials “OC” (Orfèvrerie Christofle).