Left: George Jouve, Shark sculpture, circa 1957. Right: Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand, Two-sided wardrobe, designed for Cité Universitaire d'Antony, France, circa 1954. NY Design.
Lots 101–121 in our New York Design Sale on 11 December showcase the remarkable vision of a single collector. This collection reflects a passionate pursuit of exceptional and rare examples of modern and contemporary design, guided by a discerning eye for varied, yet complementary, aesthetics. This single-owner section of the Design Sale, titled Property of a Private American Collector, features outstanding examples of Post-War French design, contemporary ceramics, Latin American design, and contemporary design. In addition to these Design pieces, contemporary art from the same collection will be offered in our upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction that runs from 2–12 December. These works will be exhibited in our 432 Park Avenue galleries alongside the Design Sale.
Charlotte Perriand and Her Contemporaries in Post-War France
The Post-War years were a time of unprecedented creativity in French design, sparked by a utopian desire to rebuild a new world from the wreckage of World War II. Works by Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999) epitomize the simplicity, functionality, and organic elegance of the French mid-century modern style. One of the very few women among the designers of this era, she ranks among the greatest furniture designers of 20th century, and her influence on other designers of the period — including many in this selection — is legendary.
Charlotte Perriand, "En Forme" sideboard, circa 1964. NY Design.
From the beginning in the 1920s, Perriand rejected the Beaux Artes ideals of her contemporaries to embrace modern industrial materials and a visionary “machine age” minimalist aesthetic, rooted in the conviction that design was an intrinsic part of the human experience that could be harnessed to create a better society. Her work of the late 1920s brought her to attention the architect Le Corbusier who — recognizing her as a kindred spirit and a great talent — engaged her in 1927 to work collaboratively with him in his studio as one of his principal furniture designers. After a decade executing on concepts such as the chair as “a machine for sitting,” she finally made the decision to “step out from under his shadow” and create a career of her own.
Charlotte Perriand, Bench, designed for Résidence des Trois Arcs, Savoie, France, 1967–1973. NY Design.
Becoming more egalitarian in her outlook in the 1930s, Perriand turned to wood as a more more economical alternative to the more expensive and increasingly scarce industrial materials such as chrome, which she had favored. Seeking to achieve an exciting balance between economical manufacturing mass production techniques and more artisanal solutions at a bespoke scale, she began exploring free-form carving in wood as early as the 1938 in works she created for herself. While kept abroad during World War II in Japan and Vietnam from 1941 to 1946, she studied traditional Japanese woodworking and joinery as an essential component of the Eastern design aesthetic, which had deeply impressed her.
Charlotte Perriand, two "Berger" stools. NY Design.
Many of Charlotte Perriand’s designs from the mid-1930s on reflect her fascination with the rugged Alpine vernacular of Savoie, where her grandparents lived. Additionally, throughout her career, she continued to create designs for the ski resorts there, such as Les Arcs (1967–1982). Her famous Berger stools, of which she made a variety, are based on the traditional milking stools used by Alpine shepherds.
Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, Sideboard, model no. 4, designed 1939–1945, manufactured 1946–1968. NY Design.
The Geneva-born architect and Pierre Jeanneret (1896–1967) was the younger cousin and longtime collaborator of Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret). They’d founded the architectural practice together in Paris in 1922 and worked independently and together for many years on a variety of residential and civic projects. Charlotte Perriand said of her decade in the studio with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret that it was intensely collaborative, like they were “three fingers on the same hand.” After finishing her work with Le Corbusier in 1938, Jeanneret remained among her key collaborators.
Left: Jean Prouvé, Panel with portholes, 1950s. Right: Jean Prouvé, Long swing jib wall light, for the École de la Verrerie, Croismare, France, 1948. NY Design.
Another of the 20th-century’s most important designers, Jean Prouvé (1901–1984) was a master metalworker, with a keen understanding of manufacturing and a deep and sophisticated appreciation of modernist aesthetics. Le Corbusier, with whom he collaborated early on, hailed Prouvé as a "constructeur" for his unique ability to link architecture and engineering. He’d grown up in Nancy, the son of an artist of the École de Nancy, and, throughout his career, he took the values of this collective to heart, focusing on the interdependency of art and industry and the importance of strong social conscience. Trained as an artisan blacksmith working in cast iron, he soon switched his focus to steel and aluminum — which were better suited to his modernist values — and in 1931 opened “Ateliers Jean Prouvé” in Nancy. His genius in adapting industrial processes to architecture and furniture design made him an invaluable collaborator and a formidable designer in his own right.
Jean Prouvé, "Compas" table, model no. 512, circa 1953. NY Design.
I was raised in a world of artists and scholars, a world which nourished my mind.
— Jean Prouvé
Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand, Two-sided wardrobe, designed for Cité Universitaire d'Antony, France, circa 1954. NY Design.
Prouvé was among the most important of Perriand's collaborators. This two-sided wardrobe was among their winning designs in the prestigious 1954 invitational competition to furnish the “Cité Universitaire Jean Zay,” newly built by architect Eugène Beaudouin in Antony near Paris.
Pierre Chapo, Dining table, model no. T35, circa 1972. NY Design.
The renowned French furniture designer Pierre Chapo (1927–1987) is celebrated for his sculptural and organic approach to design. Inspired by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand, as well as Mies Van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, his work is a tribute to nature and natural materials. The quality of craftsmanship in his pieces — such as Dining table, model no. T35, circa 1972 on offer in this sale — is a testament to his extraordinary woodworking skills. In a gallery he opened on boulevard de l'Hôpital in Paris' 13th arrondissement of Paris, he showcased his own pieces alongside other artists who shared a similar aesthetic, like Isamu Noguchi. Notably, Samuel Beckett was among his first clients.
Left: Serge Mouille, Pair of "Flamme" wall lights, circa 1962. Right: Mathieu Matégot, "Bagdad" table lamp, circa 1954. NY Design.
Serge Mouille (1922–1988) was among the important prominent lighting designers of the 20th century. He launched his career in Paris before World War II as an artisanal metalworker, mentored by master goldsmith Gilbert LaCroix, among others. After opening his own workshop in 1945, he quickly became known for his innovative hand-crafted lighting designs with forms inspired by the details of nature. By the early 1950s, with his celebrated series of “Black Shapes” having skyrocketed his reputation from craftsman to artist, he dedicated himself exclusively to lighting design. His work his notable for its dynamic sculptural qualities, reducing form to its essence. The Pair of "Flamme" wall lights, circa 1962, offered in this sale is among his most iconic designs.
In his workshop in Paris after World War II — and later in Casablanca — Mathieu Matégot (1910–2001) crafted innovative designs for chairs, tables, sideboards, and desks from a variety of materials including metal, rattan, glass, and formica — but it is his work with perforated sheet metal that he is best known. Matégot evolved a signature ‘rigitulle’ technique of perforating and folding sheet metal to create a lace-like effect, which he patented to apply exclusively to his own designs. He pioneered this technique from rudimentary metalworking skills he learned as a forced industrial laborer after being captured by the Germans in World War II. The "Bagdad" table lamp, circa 1954 — inspired by the lanterns of the Middle East — is among Matégot’s most famous and iconic designs. In it, he forms a complex volume from a single rigitulle sheet folded into 20 triangular sides, said to resemble a cubist rendition of a comet. A favorite among collectors, his works are included in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Left: George Jouve, Shark sculpture, circa 1957. Right: George Jouve, "Toro" vase, circa 1949. NY Design.
The sculptural clarity and clean silhouettes of French ceramicist Georges Jouve (1910–1964) capture the buoyant optimism of the Post-War era in France and one often sees him paired with designs by Charlotte Perriand. He is, in his own right, considered one of the 20th-century most important artists working in the ceramic medium. Jouve studied sculpture, art history, and theory at the at the prestigious École Boulle in Paris, but discovered his medium only after escaping from the Germans in World War II to a potters’ Dieulefit village in the South of France. With tireless invention, imagination, and distinctive savoir faire, he reworked the techniques and conventions of the region’s traditional religious figurines into a new modernist idiom — and, in 1944, opened his studio in Paris.
Suzanne Ramié, Table lamp, 1950s. NY Design.
A key figure in the French potters’ city of Vallauris, Suzanne Ramié (1905–1974) is best known for founding Atelier Madoura in 1938 with her husband, Georges Ramié, where Pablo Picasso famously produced over 3,500 ceramics over a period of 25 years. Her own ceramic works are explorations of sculptural form celebrated for updating the traditional shapes of Mediterranean pottery. Building on her drawing and painting practice, which she’d begun during studies at the École National des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, and her investigation into ancient civilizations, she innovated a fresh language of modern silhouettes, reinventing regional traditions of Vallauris potters’ earthenware techniques and forms dating back to the 17th century, even favoring a wood-burning 'Roman Type Kiln,' which resulted in every piece being unique.
The Mexican Modernism of Luis Barragán
Widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s most influential architects, the Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902–1988) is synonymous with Latin American modernism. His unique blend of functionalism, regionalism, and modernism came to life in a serene and minimalistic formal language of richly-coloured planes, creating a distinctive Mexican style of architecture at odds with the nationalist architectural styles favored earlier in the century. Influenced by Le Corbusier’s modernist theories, he nonetheless rejected the idea that a residential building should be a “machine for living,” championing instead a more emotional architecture that focused on form, color and texture to creating a feeling of serenity. He was honored with a retrospective in 1975 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and winning the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1980.
Luis Barragán, Low table, designed for Cuadra San Cristóbal, Los Clubes, Atizapán de Zaragoza, Mexico, circa 1966. NY Design.
Barragán’s furniture designs were integral to his larger architectural concepts. He designed the low table on offer in 1966 for Cuadra San Cristóbal, a spectacular private residence in Mexico City that magnificently weaves together interior and exterior spaces and the elements of water and earth.
Any work of architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake.
—Luis Barragán
Hugo Velasquez, Two table lamps, from Luis Barragán's Casa Prieto Lopez, Mexico City, 1960s. NY Design.
At times, rather than designing the furnishings himself, Barragán chose to work with celebrated local artisans and artists. Ceramic artist Hugo Velazquez (1929–2011) is championed as the one who first introduced high-temperature stoneware to Mexico. From his workshop in Cuernavaca, he adapted traditional Mexican techniques to modernist aesthetics and collaborated with many of the most important artists and architects of his generation, including Francisco Toledo, Clara Porset, Manuel Parra, among others. Just recently, Velasquez’s work was featured in Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, 1940–1980 at MoMA. These table lamps by Hugo Velasquez are from Luis Barragán's for his Casa Prieto Lopez in Mexico City, where they complemented the austere geometric volumes of his architecture for many years.
Post-War and Contemporary Design
Donald Judd, Rare "Armchair 1", designed 1984, produced 1993. NY Design.
Around 1978, after becoming involved with the Italian-born architect Lauretta Vinciarelli, the great Minimalist artist Donald Judd (1928–1994), pursued furniture design with a renewed passion. He designed the Rare "Armchair 1" on offer in this auction in 1984, during the height of this momentum. Among his primary considerations as a furniture designer was the principal of “reasonableness” — i.e., that a chair be reasonable as a chair. The sculptural presence and material integrity of this galvanized steel piece resonate as declarative statements of the artist’s vision.
Left: Giancarlo Valle, "Kevin" sofa. Right: Kathy Butterly, "Before Clarity", 2022. NY Design.
Giancarlo Valle (b. 1982) is a contemporary architect and designer who’s been getting a lot of attention in recent years. In 2018, when he made it onto Architectural Digest’s AD 100 list, the magazine identified him as “a standard-bearer for a new wave of talents determined to broker a nuanced rapprochement between the archetypes of the past and the spirit of the present.” No less did The New York Times celebrate him for his “strain of modernism dosed with whimsy.” Valle grew up in San Francisco, Chicago, Caracas, and Guatemala City. After receiving his Masters in Architecture from Princeton and working with cutting edge-firms Snøhetta and SHoP Architects, he founded his own studio in Brooklyn in 2016 to probe the overlapping disciplines of architecture, and furniture design with a playful and studied wit focused on the history of design. The Kevin sofa on offer in this sale is Valle’s subtle nod to the work of mid-century French visionary designer Jean Royère.
Kathy Butterly (born 1963) is a contemporary artist based in New York City who works in ceramics. Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker in 2019 identified her as "today’s liveliest master of clay." Inspired by the body, children's toys, Asian religions, and pop culture — as well as the paper-thin vessels of George Ohr (1857–1918) — her pieces typically pair whimsical and organic abstract forms with geometric bases, which she calls podiums for their role in staging the voices of the pieces. Her works also reflect the influence of Robert Arneson, with whom she studied at the University of California, Davis, and the vitality of the California art scene. Coming to clay with a background in painting, Butterly has evolved her own unorthodox techniques, often glazing and firing her porcelains over and over again to create a multi-layered richness of surface depth.
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