Last month, the revered French designer Ronan Bouroullec was in New York’s Flos showroom on a whistle-stop tour to promote his new lamp collection. The Céramique was refreshingly incongruous to the sleek modernity and poseable high-tech chic lighting stationed throughout the second-floor gallery.

The Céramique is a nexus of eras and possibilities. With its handcrafted surface, it suggests a sculpted vessel that could be from decades ago, but its subtle, minimalist modern shape also echoes poseable lamps, a subliminally cheeky design swerve.

The Céramique comes in the color ways. Photo: Piero Fasanotto.

“I was tired of all these very high-tech lamps pretending to be extraordinary and new,” Bouroullec said. “For me, the subject of a lamp is the beauty of it, the quality of the object itself. It shouldn’t be about technology and then the quality of light. I wanted to show that with just a basic bulb, and a bit of clay, you can do an interesting object.”

He added, “A good object is a mix of different aspects. It’s a very primitive object. It could have been done 100 years ago. It’s not linked to this time. It’s a very basic object, but I think sometimes we need some things around us which are just pure presence, pure beauty. Things that work well with a natural light when you wake up in the morning and you have a coffee, or after a party you are happy to have these objects surrounding you.”

Bouroullec was so chuffed with this project that he kept two for himself, one for his 19th-century Paris apartment, the other for his Brittany farmhouse. “It works quite well in these different atmospheres,” he said.

The Céramique in situ. Photo: Angèle Châtenet

The lamp, which retails for $1,109, comes in three configurations and colorways: moss green, navy blue, and rust red. These hues have been noticeable in his drawings as of late (some of his art is available at DWR), but the artist and designer dismissed any kind of deeper personal color philosophy with a wave of his hand and noted, “I’m not very good to speak about color. I play with color every day, and understand my palette is something that is moving from here to here. I chose these because I think they are quite strong and delicate at the same time.”

The Céramique in situ. Photo: Angèle Châtenet

The designer became an industry icon with his long-term professional partnership with his brother, Erwan. They went their separate creative ways at the beginning of this year. Recent solo forays have included Day After Day, a book compiling images documenting his creative process;  his drawings formed the basis for a collaboration with Issey Miyake. But he is particularly fond of the Céramique. “I don’t like to promote objects,” he said. “But when I decide that an object is good enough and I’m happy that it exists, I like to speak about it.”

The designer Ronan Bouroullec illuminates the Céramique in Rust Red. Photo: Angèle Châtenet

But the road to stripped-down minimalism is often very arduous and never so simple. “It was a technical nightmare,” he said, “and very hard to get good shape and proportion. Is it too big? Too small? It’s not like a gadget people are happy to put in the corner of a room. When you get it, you cannot escape. It’s here in the room physically, like a guest that you need to live with.”