Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Maria Pergay's Brilliant Furniture Designs - Fusing Marquetry with Stainless Steel

Maria Pergay: Between Ideas and Design

Maria Pergay


Stuart Isett for the New York Times

Currents | QandA
New York Times










By RIMA SUQI
Published: May 19, 2010

Last weekend, while New York City was overrun by design enthusiasts in town for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Maria Pergay, a 79-year-old Parisian furniture designer relatively unknown in this country, was ensconced in a nautical modernist room at the Maritime Hotel.


She was in New York not for the furniture fair — an event, it turns out, that she has never heard of — but to show her latest work at the Demisch Danant gallery in Chelsea (including a sofa of broken bricks she is shown sitting on). Those expecting a woman of her age to produce soft, feminine, upholstered pieces appropriate for a Paris pied-à-terre may be surprised by what has been Ms. Pergay’s material of choice for decades: stainless steel...







"Making Its Mark"
Art and Antiques, 2006

"Today, a handful of renowed artists, notably Silas Kopf, Maria Pergay, Jay Stanger and Jean-Charles Spindler, innovatively employ marquetry and parquetry and inlay and intarsia in their work as a means to an artistic end. “There are not a lot of contemporary artists working with marquetry,” says Scott Jacobson, owner of Manhattan’s Leo Kaplan Modern. “It’s highly skilled work and painstaking.”



Regardless of the style or type of inlay, the wide appeal of marquetry is more than surface deep. Art lovers, for example, are drawn to Pergay’s work, which incorporates stainless steel inlays in a variety of finishes and other unusual combinations of precious woods and natural elements like mother of pearl, says Suzanna Demisch, a partner in Manhattan’s Demisch Danant, “because they can’t figure out how it’s done.”
While cutting-edge sculptural works like Pergay’s, which sell for $15,000 to $150,000, prove that marquetry and parquetry and inlays and intarsia always will have a place in the art world, the craft it takes to turn out tour-de-force pieces is another matter."


20th and 21st Century Designers
I've discovered a tastefully curated collection of profiles on 20th and 21st Century design luminaries. The profiles are linked to galleries and dealers that offer works that are available for purchase. This marvelous 'Chevet" (bedside table) by Maria Pergay provides an example of 1stdibbs.com's interesting approach.

More of Maria Pergay's Brilliant Design

'Chevet' By Maria Pergay 






Tiger Table 
 
“Tiger Table” - also by Maria Pergay - is crafted with polished stainless steel and ebony macassar.  
Courtesy of Demisch Danant-Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, NY.



"Screen" 2006

“Screen” 2006, by designer Maria Pergay is made of polished stainless steel with wood inlays. 
Courtesy of Demisch Danant-Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, NY.




"Maria Pergay: Between Ideas and Design"


 
To purchase "Maria Pergay: Between Ideas and Design" click the Amazon link below


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