French retro design commands stellar prices

Confident in style and lavish in its use of materials, French interior design from the 1950s and 60s exudes the post-World War II era, with its boundless hope and prosperity.

For decades, this work has lingered in the shade but today -- when optimism seems to be in short supply -- it's being hailed as a classic.

Design by the so-called French masters is commanding higher prices at auction than big Scandinavian names from the same era such as Finn Juhl or Peder Moos, says Paris auction house Artcurial.

In one extraordinary case, a "Trapeze" table made of folded metal by Jean Prouve sold last year for 1.29 million euros ($1.45 million).

Since the 1950s, the table had stood in the canteen of a large student residence near Paris.

In 1983, the institute's director decided to get rid of it, asking for "all the metal tables in the refectory to be replaced to make the cleaning easier," recalls Emmanuel Berard, director of the design department at Artcurial.

"He didn't even know who had made these tables!"

Equally sought after are the aluminium-and-wood bookshelves of Charlotte Perriand, which were designed to furnish student digs. A recent example of her work sold for $223,000.

- Era of mass production -

Underpinning the design of the "French masters" is the need to combine flair with social needs, say art historians.

"These are people who worked in mass production, whose career was helped by the post-war reconstruction, in an era when they had to build a huge number of homes and fill them with mass-produced furniture," explains Berard.

Pieces from Chandigarh, the city in northern India which was designed and built in the 1950s by Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier -- and was recently listed as a World Heritage Site -- generate a similar passion.

Chairs, stools and chests of drawers made of teak, standard lamps and even manhole covers which were thrown on the rubbish tip or sold off cheaply by the Indian authorities are now all the rage in western auction houses.

The roaring success of these designers and architects owes much to a handful of Paris art collectors and gallery owners, among them Patrick Seguin, Francois Laffanour and Philippe Jousse.

At the end of the 1970s, Jousse went into Emmaus, a French charity shop which sells furniture and picked up a Prouve table for 300 francs -- the equivalent of around 150 euros ($167) in today's money.

He quickly began to search for more.

"I always knew it was important," he recalls. "But it was risky, because for years we didn't sell anything."

- Hunger for vintage -

"Jean Prouve would be turning in his grave if he could see these prices! He was a very modest man," says Francoise Jollant-Kneebone.

A design historian, Jollant-Kneebone is co-curating an exhibition dedicated to pioneering industrial designer Roger Tallon (1929-2011) at Paris' Museum of Decorative Arts.

The Pompidou Centre has also presented a retrospective of Pierre Paulin (1927-2009), another big figure in French design.

And at Paris' Paul Bert Serpette antiques market -- "the biggest in the world" -- vintage items make up more than half of the goods on display.

When director Marion Dufranc arrived five years ago, the antiques market was "going through a rough patch".

"Around 80 percent of the demand for space was from traders selling vintage goods from the 1950s to the 1970s," she recalls.

"Today, we're full -- and we even have a waiting list."

- 'Throwback to childhood' -

For those who can't offer originals, there are always pieces which have been reissued.

Reworked in bright colours and bold graphics, such pieces are now appearing in restaurants in Paris and across the world, from Moscow to Las Vegas.

"These are styles and materials that we've all seen, either at home, at your grandparents' or at your aunt and uncle's house," explains Celine Tahar, co-founder of Les Gambettes -- a five-year-old company whose annual turnover has been growing by almost a third.

"It's a throwback to childhood."

From a design historian's perspective, the search for some sort of "comfort blanket" from decades past tends to happen "because we don't have any positive ideas about our own era," explains Jollant-Kneebone.

"We must examine our own era to understand whether it has 'a style' of its own, for example the period since the millennium," she says.

Conscious that "the whims of fashion don't last" Paul Bert Serpette, has, she says, actually stopped taking on new stalls dedicated to vintage items.

"I think that the next trend will be for fusion," she predicts.

"You will be able have an 18th-century chest-of-drawers, a sofa by Jean Prouve, a contemporary art sculpture and a street art wall painting."