Showroom

Garnier & Linker

By appointment

Handcrafted lighting and furniture designed in Paris, made in small series in alabaster, volcanic stone, and cast glass.

Garnier & Linker is a Paris workshop, and the suite on the fourth floor of the New York Design Center at 200 Lexington Avenue is where its work is shown in New York. Guillaume Garnier and Florent Linker founded it, and the New York suite is held through a representative, Delbert Arthur, rather than by the workshop itself. That is worth knowing before the visit, because the people in the room represent the line rather than make it.

What it carries is a narrow collection of lighting and furniture in materials that are the point rather than the finish. Alabaster, volcanic stone, bronze, plaster and cast glass, handmade by French craftsmen. Alabaster is the one to see lit: it transmits rather than reflects, so a shade reads as a solid stone object switched off and as a glowing one switched on, and no photograph carries both states.

Because the pieces are handmade in small numbers, each carries the variation of its material. Two alabaster shades from the same run differ in vein and in how much light they pass, which is inherent rather than a fault.

The suite is by appointment, which is narrower than the building around it, and it is arranged through the representative rather than the workshop.

Ask to see a piece both lit and unlit before it is specified, and on a pair or a run ask for them to be selected together from the same block. Alabaster chosen from a single switched on sample will not predict what a second one does, and a pair that does not match is a pair that has to be lived with.