Large Circular Mirror / Psyche In Brushed Aluminum By Pierre Vandel

Designer: Pierre Vandel (1946).
Style: Modern / Space Age / 1970s.
Place of origin / date of manufacture: France. 20th century.
Condition: excellent.

Large circular mirror / psyche by French designer Pierre Vandel in aluminum. This mirror dates from the beginning of Vandel's career as a designer and is usually dated 1972, a period during which he developed aluminum tables, lamps and armchairs including the famous Vertèbre armchair.
The base is in two parts connected by screws and the mirror is fixed by a rotating axis allowing it to be oriented vertically. The position is maintained by a retaining screw. The whole is in brushed aluminum, a very innovative material in the early 1970s.

In very good condition, with slight traces of use. A detailed certificate will be given to the buyer on our gallery's letterhead.

Dimensions: Height 46.5 cm, Width 44 cm, Depth 19.5 cm, Diameter of the mirror 39.2 cm.

Pierre Vandel was born in 1946 in the suburbs 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 trained professionally in assembly and industrial design, before joining a research team at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées and the École 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 established field of table, chair and lighting design. In 1969, the company Marais International placed an order to distribute 5,000 copies of the designer's relatively unknown work. Yet it was his encounter and friendship with iconic fashion designer Pierre Cardin (b. 1922) that would prove to be the turning point in Vandel's design career and bring him international success. Cardin supported Vandel's efforts by encouraging him to create his own label, Pierre Vandel - Paris, and then by introducing him to high society, who purchased Vandel's designs.

Vandel's designs - which included dining tables, desks and coffee tables, made of aluminium, lacquered wood or plexiglass frames with brass details and smoked or clear glass tabletops - were exported to clients in New York, London, Melbourne and Tokyo. His Vertèbre chair (1972), named after its aluminium frame resembling a spine, was upholstered in thick brown or black leather. Produced for a short four years, only 800 chairs in total were made - half with armrests and half without. The Vertebra chair helped establish Pierre Vandel's reputation as an avant-garde and innovative designer in the design community, but the history of this rare chair was slightly overshadowed by Pierre Vandel's more accessible and mass-produced "Hollywood Regency" models.

Now in his seventies, Pierre Vandel continues to design new products in his workshop in Croix, near his hometown.