Pyrite Lamp, By Claude De Muzac, Paris, France, Circa 1970

Lamp consisting of a large block of pyrite fixed on a bent, polished steel base.
Recent cotton lampshade, redone to match the original.
Overall height: 69 cm (27.16 inches)
Base height: 45 cm (17.7 inches)
Diameter of the lampshade: 32 cm (12.6 inches)
Base width: 13 cm (5.12 inches)
Base lenght: 21 cm (8.3 inches)

Biography

Claude de Muzac (1935-2022) was a highly talented decorator and artist.
With subtlety, precision and daring, Claude de Muzac set out from her beginnings around 1960 to showcase the rarest and strangest objects, from dog bones to paintings by her contemporaries, in surprising, precious and poor materials, Plexiglas, enamel and scales, art objects that had suffered or no longer suffered the velvet and gilding of an overly 19th-century frame. After studying drawing at Paul Colin’s studio and working as a window dresser, she was hired by Daniel Cordier, with whom she trained in the presentation of artworks.
She soon opened her own boutique where she offered frames of constant inventiveness, playing with contrasting materials and matching colors. Her famous clients included Georges Pompidou, Peter O’Toole, André Malraux, Edmond de Rothschild, Man Ray, and the list goes on. Some, like Max Ernst, chose the frame and painted for the frame. As for Serge Poliakoff, he came in every day and commissioned frames, and in one of his favorites, which was made of lapis lazuli, he painted a large blue composition. Her customers are often her friends, and her friends become her collaborators, so she surrounds herself with those she loves, inspiring them to create new objects and jewelry that she presents in her Grotte-galerie. The unclassifiable intuition that makes Claude de Muzac’s work so beautiful is certainly this quality of entourage. Shadows become frames, pedestals become faces, and the other is each time for her a new form of inspiration, of rapprochement or opposition, of respect and passion.
Source: « Claude de Muzac », la Galerie Parisienne.