Classic Reissue
Pierre Paulin Celebrates 80th
Birthday with Revival of
Pumpkin
Story by Debra Kronowitz
Photos by J. P. Lemoine
Ligne Roset celebrated legendary French designer Pierre Paulin’s 80th
birthday by reviving two of the French designer’s original works, the
Tanis
desk and the Pumpkin sofa and
chairs.
Passionate about sculpture, Paulin uses modern and organic shapes,
soft and welcoming lines, as most of his functional, yet elegant,
designs show.
One of
his most significant creations,
Pumpkin, was designed in 1971
for the
Elysée Palace during the tenure of French President Georges Pompidou.
The sofas and loveseats were used in Pompidou’s private palace apartment
and represented a time of revolutionary modernism. It was Pompidou’s
wish that the chair be mass-produced.
As
the name suggests,
Pumpkin
is evocative of a giant pumpkin, welcoming the user with its voluptuous
protective shell. The demand to
model a seat that adapts to the body and not the other way around was
one idea when shaping Pumpkin.
Characteristic of the revolutionary style of Paulin, as initiated at the
end of the 1950s, the designer effectively liberated seating by treating
each piece as a unique volume, more or less sculpted from foam and not
necessarily resting on four feet. This untraditional approach brought
extraordinary freedom in terms of form, liberating seating as it did
from standard methods of assembly and orthogonal lines.
The redesigned pieces incorporate Ligne Roset’s trademark foam
construction and are available in armchair with low or high backrest, a
two-seat love seat, a three-seat sofa and ottoman. |
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