Marketscape: The Old Curiosity Shop

Karen D. Singh and Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 8/1/2008

As Francine Gardner, owner and creative director of Intérieurs, walked the streets of Paris en route to a planning session with designer José Esteves, she stumbled upon a tiny antiques shop. "It had the most amazing vitrine filled with wonderful eclectic objects," she recalls. Meeting with Esteves but still preoccupied by what she had seen, she promptly issued a challenge: Re-create a cabinet of curiosities in his next collection. When he returned to his workshop, Curiosites was born.

More like discoveries than decor, the collection's 21 lamps and accessories reveal a medley of influences. Gold-painted celestial motifs adorn the linen shade of blackened-steel Step to the Moon, while Galaxy is a sphere of hand-welded steel. Airborne but not in orbit are sculpted plaster Peace Bird, Messenger Bird, and Blackbird. Plaster gives way to papier-mâché in Paper Egg, a wire-framed hanging lantern; King of the Forest, a steel table lamp with a crowned bird figure standing on the base; and Handbird, a table lamp with a base in the form of an outstretched hand and forearm. Sitting Boy Smiling and Lounging Boy both take their name from the stick-figure shape of their hand-forged steel bodies. On the abstract end of the spectrum, randomness seems to rule the steel-wire forms of the Sphere String and Square String lamps. If you can't deal with light switches, consider the quartet of Porcelain Candlesticks. 212-343-0800; interieurs.com. circle 409

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