Designer Michael Anastassiades has announced the closure of his eponymous lighting brand after 20 years in business, telling Dezeen he plans to dedicate his newfound free time "solely to creating things".

The lighting company will continue operating until the end of summer before ultimately closing its doors, while Anastassiades will continue to design for other brands and private clients under the umbrella of his London studio – also named Michael Anastassiades – which he founded in 1994.

"After 20 inspiring years, the time has come to close the chapter of my brand, Michael Anastassiades – a platform for communicating my personal vision in lighting and making my designs available to a wider audience," he said in a statement.

The move wasn't motivated by financial reasons, according to Anastassiades, but rather by a desire to reclaim some of the time currently spent on managing the lighting business for his primary passion, which is design.

"I've always done the stuff that I love the most, but I had to split my time," he told Dezeen.

"Now, I've decided that I've achieved what I needed to achieve with this brand because it opened up a lot of doors, a lot of collaborations with the industry. So now I've decided to dedicate my time solely to creating things rather than running the business."

Anastassiades originally launched his lighting brand at Maison&Objet in 2007 with the Tube Chandelier and the aim to take full control over his output as a designer.

"I decided to take the step and start the brand 20 years ago as a way to enter the industry under my own terms, without any compromise," he remembered.

"I wanted to have full control over the way I do things, so I was fully involved in the running of the company, from the product development to manufacturing to the communication to the sales channels."

Over the following decades, the brand expanded to encompass a team of around 12 people and produced some of Anastassiades's most sculptural, gravity-defying lighting, such as the Mobile Chandeliers (top image) and the Tip of the Tongue table lamp, proving that they could be commercially viable.

"It has always been a profitable company," he added. "I'm not saying that everything I designed was a super success, but for sure some of the ideas that seemed very complicated proved to be very successful for the brand."

"It was not a financial constraint that forced me to decide on this closure," he added. "The really nice thing about it is the fact that we are closing at a time when the company is in a good place."

By the end of summer, the brand will be closing its assembly and logistics facility in Birmingham and some team members will likely be moving over to work for Anastassiades's studio instead.

"It's a bit early to predict what will happen, because it's also a joint decision," he explained.

"Obviously, the roles are going to be different, and the needs of the studio are different than the needs of running a brand. I will no longer have the production facility and the warehouse, so it's a different type of work."

Anastassiades's focus in the studio will be on designing limited edition and custom pieces of lighting and furniture, as well as collaborations with other brands. Coming up next is an exhibition in Kyoto, Japan, at the beginning of June.

The portrait of Anastassiades is by Osma Harvilahti.