Description
SERGE CHERMAYEFF (Grozny, Chechnya, 1900-Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1996) for Practical Equipement Limited (PEL). Dining or coffee table, ca. 1930. Tubular steel and black lacquered wood. Slight stains and damage due to use and age. Measurements: 183 x 92 cm. This Art Deco table is elevated on two black lacquered wooden legs that support two "U" shaped structures, which act as legs. Each of these structures has three steel tubes and they communicate with each other by means of a central frame, also with triple tubes. The tabletop, which is completely separable, is made of black lacquered wood. Serge Chermayeff was a Russian architect and designer who was naturalized British and later American. His work is framed in architectural rationalism. He began his professional career as an interior decorator. With the sponsorship of the furniture company Waring & Gillow, he founded the Modern Art Studio in 1928, in association with Paul Follot. The following year he organized in London the exhibition Modern Art in French and English Furniture and Decoration, in which he showed the public the rational component of Art Deco. In 1940 he emigrated to the United States, where he associated with Clarence Mayhew for a short period of time. From then on he devoted himself mainly to teaching: he was director of the art section of Brooklyn College in New York; in 1946 he succeeded László Moholy-Nagy at the head of the Chicago Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology; between 1951 and 1953 he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; later he taught at Harvard University (1953-1962) and Yale University (1962-1971). In 1963 he published with Christopher Alexander the essay Community and Privacy, in which they attempt to describe in a scientific way the structure of an urban organism. In 1971, together with Alexander Tzonis, he published Shape of Community, in which he sets out his theses on the defense of the environment on a global scale.
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SERGE CHERMAYEFF (Grozny, Chechnya, 1900-Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1996) for Practical Equipement Limited (PEL). Dining or coffee table, ca. 1930. Tubular steel and black lacquered wood. Slight stains and damage due to use and age. Measurements: 183 x 92 cm. This Art Deco table is elevated on two black lacquered wooden legs that support two "U" shaped structures, which act as legs. Each of these structures has three steel tubes and they communicate with each other by means of a central frame, also with triple tubes. The tabletop, which is completely separable, is made of black lacquered wood. Serge Chermayeff was a Russian architect and designer who was naturalized British and later American. His work is framed in architectural rationalism. He began his professional career as an interior decorator. With the sponsorship of the furniture company Waring & Gillow, he founded the Modern Art Studio in 1928, in association with Paul Follot. The following year he organized in London the exhibition Modern Art in French and English Furniture and Decoration, in which he showed the public the rational component of Art Deco. In 1940 he emigrated to the United States, where he associated with Clarence Mayhew for a short period of time. From then on he devoted himself mainly to teaching: he was director of the art section of Brooklyn College in New York; in 1946 he succeeded László Moholy-Nagy at the head of the Chicago Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology; between 1951 and 1953 he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; later he taught at Harvard University (1953-1962) and Yale University (1962-1971). In 1963 he published with Christopher Alexander the essay Community and Privacy, in which they attempt to describe in a scientific way the structure of an urban organism. In 1971, together with Alexander Tzonis, he published Shape of Community, in which he sets out his theses on the defense of the environment on a global scale.
