Le Regard D'Alan

Engineer and metalsmith, self-taught designer and architect, manufacturer and teacher, Jean Prouvé was a key force in the evolution of 20th-century French design, introducing a style that combined economy of means and stylistic chic. Along with his frequent client and collaborator Le Corbusier and others, Prouvé, using his practical skills and his understanding of industrial materials, steered French modernism onto a path that fostered principled, democratic approaches to architecture and design.

Prouvé was born in Nancy, a city with a deep association with the decorative arts. (It is home, for example, to the famed Daum crystal manufactory.) His father, Victor Prouvé, was a ceramist and a friend and co-worker of such stars of the Art Nouveau era as glass artist Émile Gallé and furniture maker Louis Majorelle. Jean Prouvé apprenticed to a blacksmith, studied engineering, and produced ironwork for such greats of French modernism as the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. In 1931, he opened the firm Atelier Prouvé. There, he perfected techniques in folded metal that resulted in his Standard chair (1934) and other designs aimed at institutions such as schools and hospitals.

During World War II, Prouvé was a member of the French Resistance, and his first postwar efforts were devoted to designing metal pre-fab housing for those left homeless by the conflict. In the 1950s, Prouvé would unite with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret (Le Corbusier’s cousin) on numerous design projects. In 1952, he and Perriand and artist Sonia Delaunay created pieces for the Cité Internationale Universitaire foundation in Paris, which included the colorful, segmented bookshelves that are likely Prouvé’s and Perriand’s best-known designs. The pair also collaborated on 1954’s Antony line of furniture, which again, like the works on 1stDibs, demonstrated a facility for combining material strength with lightness of form.

Prouvé spent his latter decades mostly as a teacher. His work has recently won new appreciation: in 2008 the hotelier Andre Balazs purchased at auction (hammer price: just under $5 million) the Maison Tropicale, a 1951 architectural prototype house that could be shipped flat-packed, and was meant for use by Air France employees in the Congo. Other current Prouvé collectors include Brad Pitt, Larry Gagosian, Martha Stewart and the fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

The rediscovery of Jean Prouvé — given not only the aesthetic and practical power of his designs but also the social conscience his work represents — marks one of the signal “good” aspects of collecting vintage 20th-century design. An appreciation of Prouvé is an appreciation of human decency.

Find antique Jean Prouvé chairs, tables, chaise longues and other furniture on 1stDibs.

Instantly recognizable by their long slender armatures and domed, ovoid shades, the best-known floor lamps and other lighting fixtures of Serge Mouille have become emblems of the organic design of the mid-20th century. Along with Jean Prouvé, Mathieu Matégot and others, Mouille brought a fresh, modern aesthetic to metalwork, one of the most tradition-bound mediums in the decorative arts.

Mouille (pronounced: MWEE) was born to a working Parisian family. At age 15, he took up studies in the metalworking atelier of that École des Arts Appliqués, under the tutelage of the goldsmith and sculptor Gabriel Lacroix. After graduating, in 1941, Mouille worked in Lacroix’s studio and began teaching at his alma mater four years later.

In the early 1950s, bothered by the preponderance of new Italian lamps and chandeliers on the market and consumed with the belief that fixtures by Gino Sarfatti and others were unnecessarily complex, Mouille opened a lighting-design workshop. He quickly won commissions from several French schools and libraries. In 1956, the influential Paris gallerist Steph Simon — who also promoted Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and Isamu Noguchi — began to show Mouille designs, introducing his work to private collectors. Mouille would continue making handcrafted lighting fixtures at a slow but steady pace until 1964, when he stopped working to begin a long course of treatment for tuberculosis. When it was completed, Mouille returned to teaching at the École des Arts Appliqués for the remainder of his career.

With the biomorphic shades and long armatures of his fixtures, Mouille created one of the most engaging and idiosyncratic lighting aesthetics of his time. Though often described as “insect-like,” his pieces have more in common with the fluid, buoyant forms in the paintings of Jean Arp. (Mouille designed several cylindrical or columnar lamps; though highly collectible, those are interesting outliers in his body of work.)

As with Prouvé’s folded metal forms and Matégot’s perforated steel, Mouille brought a novel lightness and energy to metal furnishings. Since Mouille’s designs found renewed popularity in the early 2000s, licensed re-editions of his pieces are being produced. The disparity in price between vintage and current-day Mouille pieces is great. Older works — identification tip: the interior white reflective enameling has a yellowish cast — cost $20,000 to $40,000, and newer pieces go for 10 to 20 percent less than that. As you will see on these pages, Serge Mouille created icons of 20th century design — at once sleek, suave and friendly — that belong in any modern decor.

Find vintage Serge Mouille table lamps, chandeliers and other lighting on 1stDibs.