Vintage Workshop Lamp from Jieldé, 1950s

French lighting company Jieldé is the brainchild of Lyonese industrial workshop foreman Jean Louis Domecq (1920-1983). Toward the end of the 1940s, Domecq was searching for heavy-duty, adjustable light sources to equip the workstations of his facility. Frustrated with the available options, he decided to design his own fixture with a multi-joint, articulated arm embodied in a super robust construction. By the early 1950s, Domecq launched the Jieldé company to produce table, floor, and wall-mounted versions of his lamp system.

This task lamp has impressed design experts around the world, including Sir Terence Conran, who wrote in his book Lamps & Lighting that “the ingenuity of the Jieldé lies in its electrical circuit, which consists simply of metal discs incorporated into the hinges. This means the lamp can be moved in any direction without breaking a wire.” In other words, the Jieldé lamp is seen as “form follows function” at its finest. Today, different models of the Jieldé lamps are known as the Standard, the Loft, the Signal, and the Lak. The company also produces pendant lights.

Domecq’s daughter, Marie-Françoise, took over when her father died in 1983. In 2002, she sold Jieldé, but the company continues to fabricate these lamps by hand in Lyon, each one numbered and marked with the company emblem.