Portfolios

Analysis of works and conception: Denis DORIA

Participants: Raphaèle BILLÉ, Marie-Odile SENCE

Photography: Ecl’Art

Print run: 1,000 copies

Each portfolio includes:

20 pages of text, divided into 2 books,

76 colour plates of which 75 recto-verso

Format: 29,7 cm x 24 cm

Printed in: August 2003

Publisher: GALERIE DORIA

1, rue des Beaux-Arts – 75006 PARIS.

ISBN 2-9517172-1-0

Retail Price incl. tax: € 450

This second publication presents the most characteristic furniture of Pierre Chareau’s work. Based on prolific and unpublished photographic documentation, it constitutes an essential tool for the analysis of his work. It is the result of more than twenty years of research and the fruit of constant attention applied to his work.

Over the years, the creator’s most significant works have passed through our hands; we could observe them and study them, their physical presence allowing us to make new discoveries and to approach the particularities of his work in a new light.

Thanks to the implementation of a strict protocol of photographic registration of each of these pieces, a considerable amount of information could be gathered, inventoried and stored. With time, we were able to form a rich database, taking into account the material form of each piece and the elements it comprises.

Form, construction, volume and function are the central threads of this pathway whose aim was to prepare a detailed portrait of each creation by putting the works into perspective.

From his first outfitting projects, Pierre Chareau established himself as an inventor. Often radical, he nevertheless tended towards a point of equilibrium between the use of precious materials and the rationalisation of the form which progressively led him to remove any decoration not linked to function. His concern to produce both movable furniture and immovable furniture was linked to his research into mobility. The furniture became adjustable and transformable through ingenious systems.

Certain basic forms repeat and formed the vocabulary of the creator which he used in different types of furniture: we can thus identify the shapes termed hexagonal, tulip, fan, cut-off sides, cross or lyre. These correspond to identifiable periods in his work. To this can be added families of furniture born of material associations, such as forged iron used in load-bearing structures and wood. This evolved over time, from darker to lighter, and the increasingly frequent contrasts of variety, defined notions of exterior and interior and brings a new interpretation to volume.

The selection of works, all presented at the Galerie, covers a large part of Pierre Chareau’s furniture output. An ideal exhibition, in a way, in which the images – proposed for interpretation according to two broad themes: Construction and Function – allow us to see the extent, diversity and coherence of the creator’s stylistic vocabulary.