Choix, "Planche III: Appareils d’Éclairage: Supprimant le point lumineux"

This book, titled "Choix" (Choice), is the second of 800 copies that were published by Paul Iribe, a French illustrator, cartoonist, designer, decorator and art director, in 1930. Lamenting that French design had become "poor" and "americanized" in the years since the First World War, Iribe argues that the genius of French design lies in what he calls the "principe de l'arabesque" (principle of the arabesque). Facing the economic downturn of the 1930, Iribe is inviting his fellow French designers to choose to return to the "arabesque France" in design rather than to continue following the fashions imposed by the "cube Europe". To do so, after 31 pages with written text explaining his purpose, he presents seven plates of printed overlays over gold and silver board images depicting styles of the 1930's in home decor and fashion, as examples of industrial designs to illustrate the principle of the arabesque.

This plate, the third in the book, presents designs for three lamps ("lighting devices"), all of them created on the silver board with smooth surfaces with lines over a slightly rougher background. The first one, placed on the left half of the sheet, is made up of a bell shape, from which emerge three pyramidal layers that stand below it, held by a thin stand on a flat base. The shapes are executed with a smooth texture, with vertical lines, over the rough background of the silver board. The other two designs are placed on the right half of the sheet, and are probably meant for wall lamps. The one on top is made up of a circular shape, created with several circles of different diameters over a smooth surface, from which emerges a large shape that, decorated with scrolling vertical lines, looks almost like a palmette; two smaller versions of this shape are placed above it, creating layers for the design. Below it is a third lamp, made up of fruit motifs, including a pineapple, an apple or peach, and some bunches of grames, from which hang four inverted vertical canes. The printed overlay contains black shadows for the lamps, creating the dramatic ambiance that the lamps were meant to bring to the interiors in which they were placed.