ODETTE CHAIR BY ANTHONY GUERRÉE

ODETTE CHAIR

Anthony Guerrée read In search of lost time in 2013, a century after the publication of Marcel Proust’s first volume, and he was touched by the timeless and universal beauty of this literary masterpiece. Proust’s gallery of colorful characters is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for many artists. Each of the book’s characters possesses a singular way of being in the world, of behaving in society

Anthony Guerrée wondered whether he could design chairs that, like fictional characters, had personality traits and could serve as allegories or incarnations. Could he give life, as it were, to his chairs? By proposing a physical position, a seat can also convey a social position. The line, the comfort, the proportions of a chair not only suggest a way of sitting, but also a range of attitudes and possible scenarios. It is with these concepts that Anthony Guerrée explores the relationship between applied art and literature. He is dedicating a chair to each of his favorite Proustian characters starting with Robert de Saint Loup and Baron de Charlus

In “Swann in Love”, Marcel Proust recounts the encounter between Swann and Odette de Crécy, a maintained woman, to whom he finds resemblances to one of Jethro’s daughters in Botticelli’s work

To a bistro chair

The Second Empire was the golden age of rattan furniture and saw the development of the rattan craft. The oldest rattan seating factory in the world – the Maison Louis Drucker was founded in 1885 and still exists in Gilocourt. Rattan is a palm stem imported from the Asian rainforests during the colonial era. The rattan bistro chair symbolises the Parisian terraces and the cheerfulness of the French capital

The floral form and the use of plant materials in the design of the ODETTE chair is a reference to the cattleya of the character from In Search of Lost Time whom Swann liked to “rearrange”

For Swann and Odette, “to make cattleyas”  is the way of saying “to make love”

STUDIOTWENTYSEVEN