Mid2Mod: Jean-Michel Frank

Showing posts with label Jean-Michel Frank. Show all posts

Friday, July 25, 2014

Scandinavian Collection at 1stdibs

1stdibs enjoyed record vintage furniture sales last year, selling over a billion dollars worth...an increase of 50% over the previous year.

This year founder Michael Bruno made a trip to Copenhagen and Stockholm in order to expand and add a special Scandinavian Modern collection to the popular website. Bruno calls Scandinavian design "the precursor to mid-century modern" and says there's still plenty of great pieces available in the areas he visited.

He furnishes his own home with half mid-century furniture and half antiques and says that Arne Jacobsen, Jean-Michel Frank and Gio Ponti are his personal favorites.

Here are some beautiful examples from the new collection.

From midcenturymagazine.com
All images from 1stdibs.com

Yellow Carnaby vases by Per Lütken

Sofa by Børge Mogensen

Finn Juhl coffee table

Upholstered Peacock chair by Hans Wegner

Kaare Klint sofa

Rack of Papa Bear chairs by Hans Wegner

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Jean-Michel Frank

Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) was one of the most influential of the French modernist designers and decorators. He was born to a family of multinational bankers which included the famed diarist Anne Frank. He was educated at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris, and in 1932 opened a shop with decorator Adolphe Chanaux at number 140 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Frank made his name and established his signature style when he decorated the Paris apartment of the Vicomte Charles de Noailles and his wife, progressive patrons of the arts at the time. Photographer Man Ray's black-and-white images of the apartment contributed to Frank's reputation.

Although he occasionally used bright colors, he is best known for his emphasis on non-colors. According to his niece, his favorite color was white. He was a master of luxurious understatement and decorated with materials such as rye-straw marquetry, creamy glove leather, mica, travertine, vellum, sanded oak, lacquer and shagreen.

The files of the Parsons School of Design credit the famous Parsons table to Frank, the American designer Joseph B. Platt and an unknown student at the school's Paris branch. Frank sketched the table on a blackboard and suggested a table "of the simplest possible design" that could be elegantly covered with mother-of-pearl, parchment, lacquer or ivory.

Frank's personal life was fraught with tragedy. While he was in law school in 1915, both his older brothers died on the front line during World War I, and his father committed suicide. In 1919 he lost his mother, who had been institutionalized for several years. He fled Europe in 1939, going first to South America and then to the United States.

In 1941, devastated by the Nazi occupation of France and a failed love affair, he took his own life by jumping from a Manhattan building.

From architecturaldigest.com, plusonegallery.com and dwr.com