Highlights of the Frank furniture include a pair of screens designed in the 1930s as a special commission and a pair of bridge chairs, a commission for the beach home of Fritz Mandl, Europe’s leading munitions manufacturer who escaped from Vienna to Argentina at the beginning of World War 2.
There is also a bronze table lamp by Giacometti to a design by Frank and we illustrate a little round iron tripod table first designed for the Riviera palace of French multi-millionaire Patenotre.
Between 1921 and his suicide in 1941 Jean Michel Frank worked for the very wealthy, especially those of Buenos Aires and Paris, and his interiors have only recently been documented. He is now emerging as a seminal figure in the history of design and interior decoration.
Among Laubin’s paintings in the London show is 140 Rue de Faubourg which imagines Frank’s workshop with templates from which his furniture has been cut.
Designing on the plus side
AN INTERESTING and historic show is coming up at London’s Plus One Plus Two Galleries, 161-163 Seymour Place, W1, from October 8 to November 1 when Classic Romantic Modern combines work from the 1930s designer Jean-Michel Frank with the accomplished contemporary architectural artist Carl Laubin.
