Winter 2012

With her career well into its sixth decade, Maria Pergay can rightly be called France’s grande dame (though she would likely not appreciate the term, redolent as it is of dowagers with lorgnettes) of modernist furniture design. The new book Maria Pergay: Complete Works 1957-2010, co-authored by Suzanne Demisch and Stephane Danant, traces the remarkable path she has followed in a photographic survey of her creations. Though Pergay had no formal training, in the latter half of the 1950s she began to craft smaller objects—trays, egg cups, cigarette boxes—out of silver and often in traditional forms. But she hit her stride a decade later when she embraced a restrained style and, more importantly, discovered a new material: stainless steel. “Her decision to work with steel to make furniture that was smooth, cold, and sexy marked the invention of a whole new language,” collector Adam Lindemann writes in his introduction. “[Pergay devised] an essentially cool, stylish, and informally formal aesthetic.” In 1968, her first collection in stainless steel—which included two of her most famous designs: the gently undulating “Flying Carpet” daybed and the hypnotic “Ring” chair—was shown at Paris’s Galerie Maison et Jardin. Couturier Pierre Cardin bought all of her pieces, and Pergay’s name was made. Now, at age 81, Pergay is working as hard as ever. (Demisch notes that she has executed more than fifty new designs in the past five years.) Perhaps we should look forward to another survey Pergay wares not long from now.

Maria Pergay: Complete Works 1957–2010
By SUZANNE DEMISCH and STEPHANE DANANT
Damiani, 302 pages, $70