2 Vintage Artifort Lounge Chairs 'Model F976' & Table Harcourt & Paulin Artifort

When it came to creating his visually pleasing armchairs, lounge chairs and office chairs, designer Geoffrey Harcourt stuck to his design dictum: “First the person, then the chair.” The result? Mid-century modern furniture that was not only ergonomic and comfortable but artistic in form.

Born in 1935 in London, Harcourt’s artistic leanings began at an early age. In his youth, he attended the High Wycombe Technical School, followed by the High Wycombe School of Art, where he obtained a national diploma in design and a place to study at the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 1960, Harcourt left the United Kingdom. for Chicago, where he worked in industrial design until 1961. Then, he went to Copenhagen and worked with designer Jacob Jensen.

In 1962, Harcourt returned to the U.K. and began designing his first series of open-armed chairs for the Dutch furniture manufacturing company Artifort. His Space Age 042 Series lounge chair, designed in 1963, was an immediate success and launched Artifort into the international furniture market — like Olivier Mourgue’s low-slung Djinn chair, Harcourt’s seat was also prominently featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Harcourt designed several other notable pieces for Artifort. These included his “500 Series” lounge chairs in 1967, the F140 swivel chair in 1970, and the undulating “Cleopatra” chaise longue also in 1970.

In addition to Artifort, Harcourt designed for several other furniture companies such as Dynamite Nobel, Mines and West, Trau of Turin, Hands of Wycombe and Steelcase Strafor. In his 70s, Harcourt retired from furniture design to focus on painting. 

Harcourt’s furniture pieces have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Design Council in London and Glasgow, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. In 1978, he was awarded the title of Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of vintage Geoffrey Harcourt lounge chairs and other seating.

Pierre Paulin introduced a fresh breeze into French furniture design in the 1960s and ’70s, fostering a sleek new Space-Age aesthetic. Along with Olivier Mourgue, Paulin developed chairs, sofas, dining tables and other furnishings with flowing lines and almost surreal naturalistic forms. And his work became such a byword for chic, forward-looking design and emerging technologies that two French presidents commissioned him to create environments in the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Paulin was born in Paris to a family of artists and designers. He initially sought to become a ceramist and sculptor and was studying in the town of Vallauris near the Côte d'Azur — a center for pottery making, where Pablo Picasso spent his postwar summers crafting ceramics — but broke his hand in a fight. He enrolled at the École Camondo, the Paris interior design school. There, Paulin was strongly influenced by the work of Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson and Arne Jacobsen, as was reflected in his early creations for the manufacturer Thonet-France.

It was at the Dutch firm Artifort, which he joined in 1958, where Paulin blossomed. In a few years, he produced several of his signature designs based on abstract organic shapes. These include the Butterfly chair (1963), which features a tubular steel frame and slung leather, and a group of striking seating pieces made with steel frames covered in polyurethane foam and tight jersey fabric: the Mushroom (1960), Ribbon (1966) and Tongue (1967) chairs. The revered designer not only introduced new construction techniques to Artifort furniture but contributed fresh materials, Pop art colors and dazzling shapes to the mid-century modern era as a whole.

In 1971, the Mobilier National — a department of France’s Ministry of Culture in charge of furnishing top-tier government offices and embassies — commissioned Paulin to redesign President Georges Pompidou’s private apartment in the Élysée Palace. In three years, Paulin transformed the staid rooms into futuristic environments with curved, fabric-clad walls and furnishings such as bookcases made from an arrangement of smoked-glass U shapes, flower-like pedestal chairs and pumpkin-esque loungers.

Ten years later, the Mobilier National called on Paulin again, this time to furnish the private office of President François Mitterand. Paulin responded with an angular, postmodern take on neoclassical furniture, pieces that looked surprisingly at home in the paneled, Savonnerie-carpeted Louis XVI rooms. As those two Élysée Palace projects show, Paulin furniture works well both in a total decor or when used as a counterpoint to traditional pieces. His creations have a unique personality: bright and playful yet sophisticated and suave.

Find vintage Pierre Paulin lounge chairs, armchairs, coffee tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.