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Clara Porset Coffee and Cocktail Tables

Mexican, Cuban, 1895-1981

Cuban-born mid-century furniture maker and interior designer Clara Porset is having a moment in museums such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and beyond, with attention being paid not just to her designs for chairs, lamps and tables but to her life story, with its ties to feminism, modernization and the identification of value in indigenous materials and methods

Born into a wealthy Cuban family, Porset studied at Columbia University, the Sorbonne and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, which she attended at the urging of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and where her teachers included Josef and Anni Albers

A critic of Cuba’s right-wing government, she left her home country for Mexico, with its more simpatico regime, in 1935. With her Mexican husband, painter Xavier Guerrero, she threw herself into studying that country’s design traditions, and together the two were winners of MoMA’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in 1941. (Porset was unfortunately not recognized at the time for her contribution but has since been credited alongside her husband for the entry.)

Like Porset, other designers of the mid-century era such as Cynthia Sargent, Don Shoemaker and the Bauhaus-trained architect Michael van Beuren who had relocated to Mexico found inspiration in their adopted country. Klaus Grabe, Morley Webb and van Beuren were also named among the Mexico-based winners of MoMA’s 1941 competition. (And van Beuren's furniture brand Domus produced Porset's designs in addition to his own.) 

Fascinated by a Spanish-inflected Mexican wood-and-wicker chair called the butaque, Porset developed her own version by tweaking proportions and incorporating new materials.

According to art critic and curator Ana Elena Mallet, its design was “a manifestation of her profound engagement with Mexican craft traditions” at a time when “discussions surrounding the definition of Mexican identity were paramount within the larger political landscape.” In this view, “Porset’s Butaque becomes not merely a chair but a tangible expression of the socio-political discourse of its time,” she says. Or, as Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s senior curator of architecture and design, told the New York Times, “This is the Latin American chair.”

Porset designed many other chairs, some in collaboration with the preeminent Mexican architect Luis Barragán. She returned to Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro came to power, with high hopes, but when her plans to start a design school (under Che Guevara, Castro’s minister of industries from 1961 to 1965) foundered, she returned to Mexico, where she continued to promote design for the rest of her life.

Find vintage Clara Porset furniture for sale on 1stDibs.

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Creator: Clara Porset
Clara Porset Modernist CP3 Solid Walnut and Glass Coffee Table by Luteca
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Cuban-born Clara Porset was a pioneer for modern design in Mexico. Having studied architecture in New York and then Paris, she finally settled in Mexico devoting her life to champion...
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2010s Mexican Modern Clara Porset Coffee and Cocktail Tables

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Clara Porset "Convertible" Coffee / Dining Table for Meubles Austin, 1950's
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A woven table with glass top by designer Clara Porset for Meubles Austin. Made in Mexico, circa 1950's. The table is often referred to as her "convertible" table because it can be co...
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1950s Mexican Mid-Century Modern Vintage Clara Porset Coffee and Cocktail Tables

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Cord, Papercord, Glass, Wood

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Clara Porset coffee and cocktail tables for sale on 1stDibs.

Clara Porset coffee and cocktail tables are available for sale on 1stDibs. These distinctive items are frequently made of wood and are designed with extraordinary care. There are many options to choose from in our collection of Clara Porset coffee and cocktail tables, although brown editions of this piece are particularly popular. Many of the original coffee and cocktail tables by Clara Porset were created in the modern style in north america during the 21st century and contemporary. If you’re looking for additional options, many customers also consider coffee and cocktail tables by Emiliano Molina, Comité de Proyectos, and Raul de la Cerda. Prices for Clara Porset coffee and cocktail tables can differ depending upon size, time period and other attributes — on 1stDibs, these items begin at $9,875 and can go as high as $9,875, while a piece like these, on average, fetch $9,875.

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