Desk by Joaquim Tenreiro for "Bloch Editores"

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Desk by Joaquim Tenreiro for "Bloch Editores"

About the Item

Desk in solid wood and wood veneer with three drawers resting on two straight legs in solid wood and attempted glass top in orange color. Desktop created specifically for Bloch Editors. Brazil, circa 1966 created in 1956 for a special order for the offices of the Bloch Editores publishing house. This office has become an iconic piece in the work of Joaquim Tenreiro and in the Brazilian modernist style thanks to its refined, elegant and sober style, but also to the high level of quality of realization of which the designer was capable. Composed of solid wood and Brazilian exotic wood veneer with deep and warm shades, it rests on two solid straight legs and has three drawers on the front. The originality of this desk is found in the orange tinted glass top, a material of great modernity that contrasts with the use of wood and perfectly matches the shades of it. An exceptional piece that marked the history of Brazilian design, here presented in perfect condition and which still includes the brochure of its origin. Bloch Editores was a Brazilian publishing house founded in 1952 and closed in 2000 belonging to the Bloch group. Its flagship was the publication of Manchete magazine, one of the main written press publications of the second half of the 20th Century. Provenance: Headquarters of Bloch Editores S.A. designed by Oscar Niemeyer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is a paradoxical destiny that Joaquim Tenreiro, renowned in Brazil as the Master of the Masters among the designers of his generation, who allows wood to express itself with the most subtlety and nobility, "seeks the vocation of its raw material" according to A. Houaiss; this while Tenreiro would like to be a painter or sculptor, passionate as he is about art in general, and that of his time in particular. Houaiss, whereas Tenreiro would have liked to be a painter or sculptor, as he was passionate about art in general and the art of his time in particular. From his youth, he inherited a love of wood. Indeed, his father is a cabinetmaker himself, and the most talented in his region in Portugal according to Tenreiro. With this training at the family cradle in the Melo region of Portugal, he arrived in Brazil in 1928, and completed his mastery by working for Laubisch & Hirth from 1931 to 1942. There, first as an apprentice and then as a designer, he perfected his skills by being responsible for making furniture of all styles, but he also learned to work in a team with hundreds of craftsmen with different specialities. It was also here that he gained confidence in his abilities, having to carry out orders for a new demand that did not find what it was looking for in the company's catalog. This new taste came primarily from the upper middle class of the civil service who, living in the new buildings of architects such as Oscar Niemeyer, wanted to furnish these modern homes with appropriate furniture. The need for novelty, of course, but also for local roots, both for meteorological reasons and because of the appetite that was emerging at that time in Brazil to create a decolonial style in search of a specific identity. Tenreiro, the first to do so, was inspired by the European modernists in terms of clean lines, but he lightened them with delicate curves, mainly in wood, from which he was able to make the most of the exceptional species he had at his disposal, as well as using a lot of caning or structure that let the whole thing breathe by opening up the circulation of air through He thus creates a constant balance between traditional craftsmanship and modernist innovation, a trait that will be found in the influence he will have on other Brazilian modernist design artists, in particular Sergio Rodrigues. Thus, in 1942, together with a salesman from his company, they set up their own workshop, Lagenbasch & Tenreiro Móveis e Decorações, which lasted until 1969, when Tenreiro, having become the country's most prominent designer, left the profession to concentrate on painting and sculpture.

Creator:
Joaquim Tenreiro (Designer)
Design:
KMG-148234 Desk
Dimensions:
Height: 29.14 in (74 cm)Width: 64.18 in (163 cm)Depth: 29.53 in (75 cm)
Style:
Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Glass,Hardwood
Place of Origin:
Brazil
Period:
Mid-20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1966
Condition:
Refinished. Wear consistent with age and use.
Seller Location:
PARIS, FR
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU6408230573942

Shop All Joaquim Tenreiro

Joaquim Tenreiro

The Portugese-born furniture designer Joaquim Tenreiro was a pioneer of modernism in Brazil, where his work paved the way for the successes of such mid-20th-century design greats as Sergio Rodrigues, Jorge Zalszupin, and Lina Bo Bardi, an Italian-Brazilian architect whose futuristic São Paulo buildings are only part of her legacy.

Tenreiro’s vintage tables, chairs and storage cabinets are known for their simplicity of line and an elegance that is enhanced by the use of richly grained South American hardwoods such as jacaranda and imbuia.

Tenreiro’s father and grandfather were both master woodworkers, under whom he trained in the craft. He had artistic leanings and in the late 1920s enrolled as a university student at the School of Arts and Crafts in Rio de Janeiro, where he joined a group of upstart modernists protesting the staid, retrograde curriculum at the college. At the time, Brazil was culturally mired in a 19th-century mindset that was reflected in an upper-class preference for academic painting and reproduction furnishings in antique European styles. But the progressive spirit that Tenreiro and his colleagues fostered slowly gained force.

With the terms “lightness” and “functionality” as his bywords, Tenreiro opened a furniture-design business in 1943, where one of his first clients was the legendary architect Oscar Niemeyer. The arrival of Brazil’s first democratically elected government, in 1945, lent modernism official sanction, which culminated in the construction of the new capital, Brasília. Tenreiro eventually stepped away from design in the late 1960s to devote his time to sculpture and painting.

To appreciate how revolutionary Tenreiro’s work seemed, one must imagine the heavy, ornately carved, deeply varnished furniture that was the standard for top-end Brazilian interior design in the 1930s. Tenreiro’s chairs and sofas employed slender, softly angular frames that were only lightly stained to highlight the grains of the local woods. He preferred chairs and chaises with caned seats and backrests that “breathe” in the tropical climate, and as a carpenter and joiner he wanted to show off the beauty of Brazilian wood.

Two versions of a three-legged side chair introduced in 1947 serve as a veritable manifesto for a new age in Brazilian design: Using the stack-lamination technique, Tenreiro bonded together a gently contoured seat made of alternating layers of different-colored native woods to produce a magnificent stripe effect. These chairs, like all Tenreiro works, demonstrate the enduring power of simple design and superb construction — with a teaspoon of flair.

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