Alexandre Noll - Design Masters New York Tuesday, December 17, 2013 | Phillips

Design Masters

New York 17 December 2013 6pm

  • Provenance

    DeLorenzo 1950, New York
    Aquired from the above, 2007

  • Literature

    Waldemar George, "Le Meubles de Noll et la Loi des Retours," Art et Industrie, October 1947, p. 34 for a chair
    Pierre Kjellberg, Le Mobilier du XXe Siècle, Dictionnaire des Créateurs, Paris, 1994, p. 455 for a set of six chairs
    Olivier Jean-Elie and Pierre Passebon, Alexandre Noll, Paris, 1999, p. 23 for the table and chairs, p. 47 for the chair

  • Catalogue Essay

    In their book on Alexandre Noll, Olivier Jean-Elie and Pierre Passebon explain that his furniture design was neither linked to the commercial decorative style nor the rigid modernism of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM). Noll was not an interior decorator like many of his contemporaries, and he did not share an interest in mass-production like the modernists of his time. While to some extent Noll’s furniture is part of the tradition of French wood carving that was so enthusiastically embraced by Art Nouveau artists such as Francois-Rupert Carabin, his work is generally thought to have arisen from his own artistic impulses. In his own time, Noll’s furniture seemed to appeal to the idea of a form’s ability to evoke an essential truth. Waldemar George, the prolific art writer and editor, wrote that his works “display a new mysticism with regard to nature, which in certain cases comes close to idolatry. It is primitive, not so much because of its style but in terms of its conception and creation.” Rising above mere craft, Jean-Elie and Passebon describe his œuvre as “offering a formal and personal response to the leveling effect that characterizes furniture-making in the 20th century.”
    Also a writer and musician, Noll began his career as a wood carver in the commercial environment of department stores, and quickly attracted attention from established designers of the period such as Paul Poiret, who commissioned him to design decorative objects and household goods. It was not until the post-war years that Noll's desire began to create large simple furniture forms. Jean-Elie and Passebon write of Noll’s desire to create “furniture sculptures.” The present lot is the embodiment of this goal, in the sculptural presence of the table’s massive form.

    Noll worked singularly in wood, preferring those without grains, partly because he perceived them as surface decoration. He also refused to use nails, hinges, handles or metal hardware of any kind. When he did not bypass joinery altogether by carving from a single piece of wood, he assembled his furniture with swallow tail pins and mortise joints. He allowed the natural qualities of the wood to dictate the forms of his sculpture and furniture.

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN COLLECTION

441

Alexandre Noll

Rare dining table and set of ten chairs

circa 1945
Mahogany.
Table: 28 1/4 x 98 5/8 x 34 1/2 in.. (71.8 x 250.5 x 87.6 cm)
Each chair: approximately 34 1/4 x 16 x 17 in. (87 x 40.6 x 43.2 cm)

Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000 

Sold for $905,000

Contact Specialist
Meaghan Roddy
Head of Sale, New York
mroddy@phillips.com
+ 1 212 940 1266

Design Masters

New York 17 December 2013 6pm