14 rue Sainte-Blandine, Lyon 69002
Ninety-one years,
one address.
Étienne Ormelin was a Baccarat cutter, dismissed in 1933 for arguing with a foreman about pendant weight. He was right, and it cost him the job. Six months later he rented a ground-floor workshop in the Confluence and started again alone.
The building has not changed hands since. It now holds two furnaces, a cutting bench his granddaughter learned on, and a drawer of card templates that are still the authority on how a Comice is cut.
AO·07 Sainte-Blandine — named for the street
From the ledger
- 1934
Rue Sainte-Blandine
Étienne Ormelin, a cutter trained at Baccarat and dismissed for insubordination, rents a ground-floor workshop in Lyon’s Confluence district. His first commission is the Comice pattern, still in production.
- 1949
The silvered years
Brass is restricted post-war. The atelier silvers what stock it has and takes on repair work for the city’s hotels. Ninety-one chandeliers pass through the workshop; the ledger survives.
- 1961
Mireille
Étienne’s daughter joins at nineteen as a cutter and takes over the furnace in 1974. She introduces free-blown glass to a house that had only ever cut it.
- 1998
The second furnace
A 480 kg day tank is installed, ending sixty-four years of buying in blanks. Everything the atelier makes has been melted on the premises since.
- 2016
Fourth generation
Séverine Ormelin returns from a decade in stage lighting and takes the drawing office. Halo Neuf, a chandelier with no crystal in it, follows five years later and divides the workshop.
- 2025
Ninety-one years
Eleven people, two furnaces, one address. Roughly forty pieces leave the building a year.
Four of the eleven
Between them, sixty-nine years at this bench.
9 years
Séverine Ormelin
Direction and drawing office
Trained in theatre lighting in Marseille. Draws every pattern by hand before it is measured.
22 years
Idris Mabrouk
Master glassblower
Runs the day tank. Free-blows every Sablier orb; has made about 9,400 of them.
7 years
Hana Kobayashi
Chasing and patina
Came from a Kanazawa metal studio. The chased bronze on Fougère is entirely hers.
31 years
Piotr Wesołowski
Crystal cutting
The last cutter in the building who learned from Mireille. Holds the Comice templates.
House standards
- Glass
- Lead-free crystal, melted on site in a 480 kg day tank at 1,240 °C. We buy sand from a single quarry in the Fontainebleau basin because the iron content is low and, more usefully, consistent.
- Metal
- Brass and silicon bronze only. Both patina, which is the point. We will lacquer on request and will tell you, once, that we think it is a mistake.
- Light
- Nothing above 2700K leaves the workshop. Every fitting is specified to dim below 2% because a chandelier at full output is a chandelier nobody wants to sit under.
- Repair
- Any piece the atelier has made, in any year, is repairable here. Send us the number stamped on the canopy. The 1934 originals come back roughly every fifteen years.
AO·06 Halo Neuf — nineteen prototypes, no crystal
Repair & restoration
Send us the number stamped on the canopy.
Any chandelier this house has made, in any year, is repairable here. The workshop holds the original templates for every pattern since 1934, which means a broken pendant can be recut to the drawing rather than approximated.
We also rewire. Most pieces from before 1970 arrive with cloth flex that should have been replaced two owners ago; we do it without altering the visible brass.
We will look at chandeliers we did not make, and we will be honest about whether the work is worth what it costs. Roughly a third of the time it is not, and we say so.
Showroom
Six patterns hang permanently in the front room, lit at the levels we recommend rather than the levels that flatter them.
Tuesday to Friday, 10h–17h, by appointment
Workshop
The furnace floor is open to clients with a commission in progress. Closed shoes, and not during a pour.
By arrangement with the drawing office
Archive
Étienne’s card templates, the 1949 repair ledger, and every pattern drawing since. Available to researchers.
Written request, two weeks’ notice