Serge Mouille, an artisan goldsmith
Serge Mouille was born in Paris in 1922. He develops very early a talent for drawing. He found his models at the Jardin des Plantes where he spent hours drawing plants and animals. On the advice of his drawing teacher, he enrolled in the entrance exam for the Applied Arts where he was accepted at the age of 13, the youngest student of his time. His mentor Gabriel Lacroix made him a master in the art of modeling metal with a hammer. He entered Hénin Orfèvre Paris where he soon established himself among experienced workers, all older than him.
After the war, Serge Mouille went into business for himself and worked for various goldsmiths. He is a craftsman recognized by all. At the same time, he worked as a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et métiers d'Art, having succeeded Gabriel Lacroix as head of the goldsmith's workshop. He devoted his whole life to the teaching profession but also to that of researcher because Serge Mouille it is also and especially 44 years of research, of drawings of luminaries and monogravures.
Luminaries of master craftsman
It is his meeting with Jacques Adnet, director of the Compagnie des Arts Français, in 1951 which will mark a turning point in his life. Indeed, he was asked to design a ''grand luminaire'' for his South American customers. Serge set to work and created the three-armed floor lamp, progressively passing from the status of master craftsman to that of creative artist by developing the now famous series of Black Shapes lights.
The three-armed floor lamp will be his first model.
In 1962, Serge Mouille had been working as a teacher and a lighting designer for ten years. He then decided to radically break away from everything he had done until then by creating the series of luminous columns using the fluorescent tube, new at the time. The two series of lamps are so different that one might think they were created by different artists. It is the incomprehension and a mixed success.
In 1963 he decided to stop his production of lamps and devoted himself entirely to teaching. Serge Mouille died in December 1988. Text from the book "Serge Mouille un classique Français", by the author Pierre-Emile Pralus published by Editions du Mont Thou in Saint-Cyr au Mont d'Or. The lamps of Serge MOUILLE, already considered as the greatest French creator of luminaries in the 50s, are today part of the icons of the design of the XXth century. These lamps, wall lights and floor lamps in black metal with white reflectors, with organic mobile shapes often mounted on elegant rods, are reissued and numbered.
