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Jean-Pierre Mesmin, like Catherine Memmi and Henry Becq, notable French designers of the home furnishing craft, has a beautiful showroom located in the heart of the St-Germaine-des-Pres, my favourite stomping ground. And whereas Catherine Memmi and Henry Becq focus more on interiors and furnitures, Jean-Pierre Mesmin moves to include the interesting design of lamps in his collection.

I am totally inspired by his lamp designs as some of them are quaint executions of somewhat tribal art in contemporary forms and are really lovely accent pieces around the home or even a commercial project.

But I would really have to focus a bit on a Nordic designer in a completely different material altogether, and only because at this stage, my mind is playing around with hues of white, beige, browns and greys … Birgit Østergaard from Denmark.

I have a soft spot for the artist who ventures into interior design and the creation of decorative pieces, and who displays a compulsion in maintaining what she describes as a crucial need for “aesthetic expression”.

It’s not a simple job to deal with “lighting” issues as there are just so many on offer right now and vying for attention that it’s really an overwhelming business if you have to face a thick catalogue of various design from something industrial, or unusually attractive, to something practical and simple for the home or a design project. Or, if you’re like me and you have to cover major interior design exhibitions bi-annually in Paris and you’re confronted by stall after stall of lighting brands and suppliers.

I always have a tendency to gravitate towards something that catches my eye, and after ten years in the business of sourcing and monitoring trends in Maison & Objet, it’s never easy, as I’ve written before, to come across something that draws the eye. In fact, the last lighting I fell for which I thought was noteworthy was the coloured chandelier by a husband and wife creative-duo from the South of France who I’ll write about and showcase later. Baccarat recently thought to produce a magnificent version in black similar to what the couple displayed initially, and it was incredibly beautiful and expensive – naturallement.

I’m always in search of the design that “talks” to me or at least catches my eye when I do my rounds at Maison & Objet, and it’s not easy to have lighting talk to you. Not when you’re oftentimes blinded by the massive selections on show.

I like the Danish designer, Birgit Østergaard and her lamps. It may be reminiscent of the cheap white Japanese paper lamps we get in Asia, but they’re far more substantial and the types I would gladly have gracing my home any time especially since it’s always important for me to know something of a design piece I’m drawn to and want on public display in the privacy of my home. It’s there as a fixture, and unless you’re a compulsive/impulsive character into changes around the home constantly, these sculptural lightings stay constant unobstrusive accent pieces that will always work to indicate you have good taste – as the lamps are meant to target design aware individuals.

Birgit, like most Scandinavians, expresses how she’s drawn to light and white through her use of white sailcloth for her lamps. Since the Scandinavian countries tend to experience about two to four hours of sunlight every winter and two to four hours of darkness every summer, it’s not surprising to realise that the suicide rate is one of the highest among the Scandinavians, and why Scandinavians passionately crave light and the sun, and why, yes, Scandinavian design always tends to be in shades of beige and white.

But it’s the form her lamps take that draws me as she explains how they were shaped into illuminous organic sculptural lighting inspired from the Nordic vision of ice and clouds she sees in the structure and surface of the sailcloth. Very poetic.

I have to admit I also find Birgit’s “art installations” fantastic which clearly shows how wonderfully gifted she is and how she truly has a talent for aesthetic illumination.

Let there be light!

==> BIRGIT ØSTERGAARD @www.birgitoestergaard.dk
==> J.P. MESMIN @www.jpmesmin.com