“Orange Slice” Chair by Pierre Paulin for Artifort, Netherlands 1960

Designed in 1960, the playful Model F437, or, more commonly, the Orange Slice chair, was organic before it was trendy to be so. Its rounded, concave shells — which appear to be curling up or unfurling based on your perspective of the brightly colored piece — appropriately resemble its pulpy namesake. French designer Pierre Paulin (1927–2009) created this chair as part of his half-century-long association with Dutch manufacturer Artifort. It is emblematic of his creative roots in sculpture as a student at the École Camondo in Paris as well as the inspiration he found in prominent innovative designers like Charles and Ray Eames.

Paulin designed furniture for Thonet early in his career, but the forms that defined the better-known work he produced at Artifort, such as the Tongue chair and the Mushroom chair, were far more fluid and abstract. In the early 1950s, Paulin was working with bent plywood, and by the 1960s, he was exploring synthetics such as polyurethane foam and rubber. The charming and cheeky Orange Slice — which is comprised of identical curved shells of foam-covered pressed beech mounted on a chromed or powder-coated metal frame — was designed at the juncture between the purely functional modernism, the colorful and exuberant Space Age and the postmodernist era. Artifort continues to produce the chair, adding an accompanying ottoman and an expanded range of upholstery options, including leather and other structured fabrics by textile manufacturer Kvadrat, to the collection.

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.

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