furniture, art & design
Afra & Tobia Scarpa (Italy 1935- Now)
‘Soriana’ Lounge Chair & Ottoman. Cassina 1970s / early edition.
Early edition chair and ottoman. The chair does have a few issues with the upholstery (fading/ one small hole and minor staining) and would benefit from being reupholstered. The ottoman is in better condition with absolute minimal signs of age and use.
Price: Chair 2.900 euro / Ottoman 1.850 euro
Circa 1930s-40s table / desk
99.5 x 62 x 74.5cm high / solid oak construction.
Dutch oak constructivist table. A simple designed small side table (or desk) that combines classical and geometric block components to form a bold design table with quite an architectural feel to it.
There are some old marks and patina from years of use, but overall it is in good solid condition.
Price: 895 euro
Sido and François Thévenin (France mid-c20th)
metal & buffalo leather side chair. Stamped. 1970s/80s.
An elegant sculptural side chair made by the famous French duo known for working across a range of specialisms including architecture, sculpture and furniture design. Like many imaginative artist/designers who came to the fore in the 1980s, their work combines elements of Postmodernism to create a narrative object : Gothic, baroque and brutalism combined in a theatrical narrative. This 1970s-80s art-chair would look fabulous in any stylish interior. It has the maker’s brandished marks to the back of the leather seat.
Born on the French Riviera in 1931, François Thévenin’s output oscillates between architecture, sculpture, design and poetry using his favourite material, metal. Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1950s, he met his future wife and partner Gisèle Sidoti, known as Sido (1934-86). In 1958, after his military service, François and Sido moved to the south, to Cannes-la-Bocca, where their house-workshop is still located.
Price: 3,200 euro
H. Pander & Zonen. (Netherlands 1855-1921)
Small circular modernist stool – completely original.
Dia.36 x 46cm high
Rare stool with original upholstery. It has its original makers label and is stamped ‘H.Pander & Zn’ to the underside alongside a model number.
Price: 760 euro
Wim den Boon (Nl 1912-68)
Solid teak corner chair. Circa 1960s. Original vinyl cushions (some signs of age/wear)
78 x 78 x 68cm high.
Wim den Boon founded ‘Groep & together with Hein Stolle and Pierre Kleykam’, in 1945. The group’s ambition was to continue the purist and functionalist prewar ideals and aesthetic into the postwar period or ‘reconstruction period’ in the Netherlands. Many of the group’s designs can be seen in the magazine ‘Goed Wonen’ (Good Living) of which Den Boon was the editorial secretary from 1948-1950 and for which he wrote several articles. Like most of Wim den Boon’s designs this rare corner easy chair would have been designed as part of a complete interior commission. Without the back cushions it measures 60cm high.
Price: 2,700 euro
Jan Slothouber & William Graatsma (NL. Mid-c20th)
Five original modular cubes from the 1970s. Laminated plywood.
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The Dutch duo Slothouber & Graatsma established themselves from the 1950s as artist/designers with the cube form as their key motif around which they developed various principles of cubic construction alongside multiples and variations thereof. Despite its restrictions they admired the cube for its clarity of form. They applied their thinking around it to a variety of objects, and artworks from small jewellery-scale 3d models and games to larger installation works.
Highly driven personalities, they considered themselves as discoverers of ‘the many applications of the democratic system of cubics’; a system that would ostensively act to counter the rise of the expressive individualism in post-WWII culture. (They later established the CCC_the Center for Cubic Constructions as a forum for promoting their ideas).
Due to their diverse and multidisciplinary output they were never to become global names – But they were a highly respected creative team (representing The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 1970) and in 1965 the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam honoured them with the exhibition ‘Vier kanten: maat, vorm, kleur, letter’ (Four sides: size, form, colour, letter). Donald Judd for one was a great admirer of their work.
Price: 3,900 euro
Root wood /free-form low chair. Circa 1970s.
86.5 x 73 x 41cm high
A unique solid wood low seat (unknown type of wood). Possibly carved from the root or the trunk of a tree.
It has a very attractive, untouched time worn patina. The seat would look good in any modern interior as it is, or with a cushion inside.
Price: 1.880 euro
Venesta plywood table/stool for Isokon. 1930s
Plywood No.1 table/stool with its accompanying circular tray. Manufactured by Luterma. Both stool and tray are stamped/labelled Venesta.
The British furniture entrepreneur Jack Pritchard managed Venesta the import company for Luterma in England who later formed the Isokon furniture company which most notably employed Marcel Breuer. These tables/stools were distributed in England post 1933 until 1939 exclusively by Isokon alongside designs by Marcel Breuer and Egon Riss.
Although the designer of the stool remains anonymous, in 2004 the art historian Alastair Grieve described a modification of the original Luterma stool (of which this stool is one) when he wrote that the original design was subsequently re-designed by the architect and founder of the Bauhaus Walter Gropius (hired as a consultant to Isokon). The very slight alterations Gropius made was to include sharper curves to the cut-out squares of the stool. Gropius’s drawings for the redesign can reportedly be found in the collection of the V&A Museum, London.
The separate tray placed on top of the stool is unusual and rare in that it is much thinner than all other trays we have seen. This has led to some minor warping over time (which may have been why it was produced later with a thicker rim?) The thinner rimmed tray may suggest that this was an early production or at the least a more limited production?
h.46.5cm x w.44cm x d.44cm
Literature:-
Price: 3.650 euro
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