Andre Salomon (1891 -1970) was a French Lighting Engineer. He was professionally active in Paris.
Education
He studied at the Ecole Superieure d’Electricite.
Biography
He was an engineer at Tompson before setting up the small electrical firm Perfécla (Perfectionnement de I’Ecla), regularly working with architects and designers, including Pierre Chareau, and André Lurcat, René Herbst, and architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. For the latter, he produced the widely published 1929 lighting fixture designed by Francis Jourdain in the form of a suspended concave metal ring projecting rays onto the ceiling and reflecting a soft indirect light elsewhere. A 1928 prototype probably influenced this fixture by Eugene Printz called Couronne lumineuse. For Herbst, Salomon specified the precise curvature of the two wings of a widely published 1928 ceiling fixture.
In 1929, he was a founding member of UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes). With Salomon, Mallet-Stevens executed wall and ceiling lighting for Paul Poiret’s shop in Paris, Casino de Saint Jean-de-Luz, and the entrance hall to the 1930 exhibition of the Union des Artistes Modernes and, for others, Bally and Café du Brésil. With Paul Nelson, he designed the lighting for the American hospital in Neuilly and invented a system of moveable lighting for the 1943 hos- pital in Saint-L6. Salomon worked on lighting for the 1935 ocean liner Normandie. After World War II, he worked with stu- dents of Auguste Perret on the reconstruction of Le Havre and on the lighting of highways and roads, and was in charge of the lighting of harbours. With his friend Georges-Henri Pingusson, he worked on the project of the college in Boulogne-Billancourt and on lighting for its basement theater.
Exhibitions
Herbst’s double-winged ceiling fixture was shown at the 1928 event of the Salon d’Automne. Collaborating with Francis Jourdain, their illuminated tables appeared at the 1937 Paris ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne,’ where Salomon contributed to Mallet-Stevens’s Pavillon de la Lumiere, ten other pavilions, and the giant work of Raoul Dufy, La Fee électricité.
Sources
Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The Design Encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL