Round Table By Pierre Vandel From The Villa d'Este Collection From The 1970s

Round table by Pierre Vandel from the Villa d'Este collection from the 1970s. It is made of a steel frame with green patina. The bevelled glass top. Legs and tops in gilded brass with leaf motifs. It bears the PIERRE VANDEL PARIS plaque. H72 x W120 x D120 Furniture designer Pierre Vandel was born in 1946 in Roubaix, a suburb of Lille, France. He is best known for his angular tables, which evoke the glamorous yet minimalist aesthetic that dominated furniture and lighting design in France in the 1970s. Pierre Vandel received professional training in assembly and industrial design, before to join a research team at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers in Paris. Interested in technological innovation and different types of product development, Pierre Vandel experimented with a vertical aquarium and hi-fi systems, before devoting himself to the already well-established field of table, chair and lighting design. In 1969, the Marais International company placed an order to distribute 5,000 copies of the designer's relatively unknown works. However, it was his meeting and his friendship with the emblematic fashion designer Pierre Cardin (born in 1922) that would prove to be the decisive turning point in Pierre Vandel's career in design and which would bring him international success. Cardin supported Pierre Vandel's efforts by encouraging him to create his own brand, Pierre Vandel - Paris, and then by making him known to high society, who bought Pierre Vandel's creations. Pierre Vandel's designs - which include dining tables, desks and coffee tables, made up of aluminium, lacquered wood or plexiglass structures with brass details and smoked or transparent glass table tops - are exported to customers in New York, London, Melbourne and Tokyo. His Vertèbre chair (1972), named after its aluminum structure reminiscent of a spine, is upholstered in thick brown or black leather. Produced for four short years, only 800 chairs in total will be made - half with armrests and the other half without. The Vertèbre chair allowed Pierre Vandel to build a reputation as an avant-garde and innovative designer in the design community, but the history of this rare chair was slightly eclipsed by Pierre Vandel's "Hollywood Regency" models, which were more accessible and produced in a greater number of copies Today in his seventies, Pierre Vandel continues to design new products in his workshop in Croix, near his home town. His designs from the 1970s are in high demand on the vintage market.