Interpreted Furniture
With Robert Descharnes and Joaquim Camps.
“During the ‘thirties Dalí filled entire notebooks with sketches for various furniture designs which he would have liked to see in the cinema, used as advertising props or have in his own house. These were objects of high symbolic content and refined formal value.
While Salvador was still living, Robert Descharnes and I discussed the possibility of producing some of those surrealist Dalí designs which, for various reasons, Salvador had been unable to make at the time. From hundreds of drawings Robert and I made a selection of the most viable ones.
The precedent of the furniture would be the mouth-shaped Dalilips settee which Salvador and I made for the Mae West room in Figueres Museum. During that time I learnt that Dalí was a great thinker, almost a conceptual artist. He didn’t like to have anything to do with the details, which he normally left to me. Behind the Dalilips the door was left open for future work together, as was this collection created twenty years later.
In the execution of this project, Robert, I and the sculptor Joaquim Camps came very close to what Salvador Dalí himself would have done had he had the opportunity to produce this furniture. Dalí used to say that the best of his work were the ideas and the worst the practical realization. He did even have the idea that, in little white envelopes, as if it was a tombola, and at extremely high prices, the ingenious ideas could be bought. We inherited one of those envelopes and made it come true.”
Leda Chair
During the ‘thirties in Paris, Salvador Dalí surrounded himself with a circle of friends involved in the application of art to varied disciplines, above and beyond the study of pure pictorial art. Jean-Michel Frank, a furniture maker and decorator of recognized prestige in the Paris of those years, was on very good terms with Dalí and together they worked on several ideas. The Bracelli lamp which we present here is a classic design after Jean-Michel’s manner of designing and working, adopted by Dalí for his house at Port Lligat. Amongst Dalí ’s specific furnishing projects, and constituting another for his curriculum vitae as a designer, may be counted the garden furnishings for his Port Lligat house, the complete architecture of the Night Club (garotte-shaped) for the Hotel Presidente in Acapulco (1957) and another project for a bar in California in the ‘forties.
As shown by the small selection now produced and included in this catalogue, Dalí ’s work was not restrictes to the traditional furnishing elements, but included tap fittings, handles, door-pulls, printed fabrics and objets of indeterminate use. In the 1990s a group of experts, led by Oscar Tusquets, set themselves the task of turning the furniture Dalí had drawn for Jean-Michel Frank into reality. Amongst these items were the Leda chair and low table, taken from the painting “Femme à la tête de roses” (1935). The prototypes were made by the sculptor Joaquim Camps and Bd Barcelona design organised the production and exclusive world marketing.
Design: Salvador Dalí
Year: 1935-1937
Bracelli
Dali frequently employed crutches in his paintings. He, himself, says he finds the crutch to be "the significance of life and death...a support for inadequacy." It is well known that Dali, for a long time, had a fetish about crutches, which stemmed from his youthful desire to place a crutch under the breast of a woman whom he saw working in the fields. The orange/red spirit, shown escaping from the pierced body in Vision of Hell, has two crutches, one under or on each breast. They seem claw-like, clutching. These crutches are more easily seen when the painting is lighted by high intensity artificial light.
Vis-à-vis de Gala
During the ‘thirties in Paris, Salvador Dalí surrounded himself with a circle of friends involved in the application of art to varied disciplines, above and beyond the study of pure pictorial art. Jean-Michel Frank, a furniture maker and decorator of recognized prestige in the Paris of those years, was on very good terms with Dalí and together they worked on several ideas. The Bracelli lamp which we present here is a classic design after Jean-Michel’s manner of designing and working, adopted by Dalí for his house at Port Lligat. Amongst Dalí ’s specific furnishing projects, and constituting another for his curriculum vitae as a designer, may be counted the garden furnishings for his Port Lligat house, the complete architecture of the Night Club (garotte-shaped) for the Hotel Presidente in Acapulco (1957) and another project for a bar in California in the ‘forties. As shown by the small selection now produced and included in this catalogue, Dalí ’s work was not restrictes to the traditional furnishing elements, but included tap fittings, handles, door-pulls, printed fabrics and objets of indeterminate use. In the 1990s a group of experts, led by Oscar Tusquets, set themselves the task of turning the furniture Dalí had drawn for Jean-Michel Frank into reality. Amongst these items were the Leda chair and low table, taken from the painting “Femme à la tête rose” (1935).
The prototypes were made by the sculptor Joaquim Camps and Bd Barcelona design organised its production and exclusive world marketing.
Structure in solid wood. Traditional upholstery with conical springs and cinches. White cotton interior lining. Wooden socket lined with polished lacquered brass plate. 100% natural silk cover and buttons in parma violet colour. Backrest upper trim in polished varnished cast brass.
80x170x82H.cm
Design: Salvador Dalí
Year: 1935-1937