Eric Robin

Young designer Eric Robin, whose work is displayed at the Left Bank gallery En Attendant les Barbares, creates dreamlike, arboreal creations inspired by nature. In a group show with a gold theme last fall, Robin’s enchanting gueridon—a circular gold-leafed top mounted on birdlike black sculpted iron feet—turned out to be the surprising best-seller. “We sold thirty tables,” reports the gallery’s Agnès Standish-Kentish, who then proposed a one-man exhibition called Arborescences earlier this year.

Robin has expanded his poetic pieces into limited-edition consoles and coffee tables with oval-disk tabletops covered in luminous white, yellow or pastel gold leaf and supported by quirky black wrought-iron tree-branch legs. And he’s also added delightful—and unlimited—standing and table lamps. Pierre Basse, sculptor Diego Giacometti’s former master iron craftsman, has cast the sculpted bases while landscaper Christophe Ponceau has set Robin’s stylized trees in pastoral scenery for the gallery show. “His designs work equally well paired with antiques or with a minimalist decor,” says Standish-Kentish, of Robin’s appeal.

35 rue de Grenelle. 01.42.22.65.25. www.barbares.com

Originally published in the June 2012 issue of France Today