PIERRE CHAREAU UNIQUE AND IMPORTANT "L" DESK, 19

Provenance
Djémil Anik's Weekend House in BAZAINVILLE near RAMBOUILLET, FRANCE
L'Arc en Seine Gallery, NEW YORK
DeLorenzo Gallery, NEW YORK

Literature
Mark Vellay and Kenneth Frampton, PIERRE CHAREAU: ARCHITECTEMEUBLIER 1883-1950, PARIS, 1984, p. 292 for a photo and plan of Djémil Anik's house, p. 81 for a similar desk
Brian Brace Taylor, PIERRE CHAREAU, COLOGNE, 1998, p. 151 for mention of the Djémil Anik commission

Pierre Chareau was born in Bordeaux in 1883. He began his design career in Paris at age 16 with the English furniture and interior design firm Waring and Gillow. In 1914 he left Waring and Gillow to become an independent interior decorator but his plans were put on hold when he was called to military service during World War I. 1919 brought the end of his military tour and he set up his own office where he designed interiors, furniture, lighting and some architectural commissions. He also began exhibiting his furniture designs at the Salon d'Automne that year.

In 1922, Chareau exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs (SAD) where he began collecting the work of such modern artists as Mondrian, Klee, Modigliani, Braque and Ernst.

By 1927, the traditional, sumptuous Art Déco style was falling out of favor as designers began to recognize that these designs were unaffordable to the masses. To negotiate this, some designers began to experiment with more socially conscious and realistically priced designs. In 1929, a group of designers, including Chareau, Mallet-Stevens and Jourdain, broke from SAD and founded the Union des Artistes Moderne (UAM), a group dedicated to massproduced, ornament-free designs that reflected the social climate of the time. The UAM first exhibited in 1930 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Chareau's furniture was often mechanical, combining plain wrought-iron elements with traditional woods. As early as 1924 Chareau had begun working with Louis Dalbet, the wroughtiron metal worker who made limited editions of Chareau's furniture models. Chareau is perhaps best known for the 1928-1932 "Maison de Verre" in Paris, for which he designed the architecture and furniture with Bernard Bijvoët, as an officeresidence for Jean and Annie Delace. The house was revolutionary in its design and is a manifestation of Le Corbusier's idea of a house as a "machine for living."

He held a strong belief in the relationship between form and function and from 1932 to 1938 researched the development of mobile room partitions. Throughout the 1930s Chareau completed numerous commissions, including the 1937 country house of dancer Djémil Anik, near Rambouillet, from which the present lot comes. The "L" desk is representative of the kinds of designs being produced at the height of the UAM's popularity. The desk's simple, affordable materials and lack of ornament speak of the social conditions of the time, while its horizontal and vertical planes reflect Chareau's interest in modern art.

There are several design features of the "L" desk offered here that are uniquely different, yet similar, to the more typical "L" desk design. When taking into consideration the commission for Djémil Anik's weekend house in Bazainville, which was a somewhat cramped space, variations in the design become apparent. For instance, Chareau made the desk slightly shallower than typically seen. It is evident from the small drawer that the desk was designed for leisure work, a letter to a friend or other writing.

The most noticeable adaptation in the desk is in the continuous form of the leg supports. Traditionally the extended open section of the desk would rest on a "T" shaped support, and, as noted, here the support leg is one complete form. Furthermore, the main section, which houses the shelf and floating drawer, is more typically constructed with an open leg support. The Anik desk, again, has one complete structure as the support.