Jacques Biny is a major Frenchman designer. His modernist light fixtures are still very coveted by collectors.
The French was born in 1913 in Valence, south of Lyons. He started studying at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1932. Shortly after graduating in 1935, he went back to Valence where he worked as an interior decorator and started designing light fixtures.At the beginning of the 1950s, he founded his own lighting company called Luminalité in Paris.
His designs are modernist, original, and characterized by pure, essential and innovative shapes which illuminate in modern contexts. Biny was one of the very first to work with new materials, such as perforated sheets of metal or Plexiglas. Jacques Biny researched tirelessly on his light fixtures' efficiency and functionality. He also collaborated with other influential designers, such as Jean Boris Lacroix, Louis Baillon, Gustave Gauthier and Michel Buffet.
Many of his lights are still considered timelessly modern. Like almost no other designer, Jacques Biny was able to find pragmatic lighting solutions which always fulfill a function in diverse architectural contexts. In the 1960s, the French created some lighting installations in French public spaces.
The DCWéditions design brand still produces numerous lights by Jacques Biny. The Biny table lamp with a box-shaped head and adjustable slats, which break the light and spread it without glaring, is outstanding. This light construction is also available as Biny wall lamps in diverse sizes, for example as a bedside version with adjustable spot lights.
Jacques Biny died suddenly in 1976, yet his creative work is still very important in the world of modern lighting design.