Name: 'Tunisie' bookcase
Brand: Christie's

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'Tunisie' bookcase

Designer Charlotte Perriand

Manufacturer/Maker/Editor Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé

Origin France

Year circa 1952

Design Museum Section French Design Icons Designed by Women

Categories Shelving, Bookcases

Designheroes ID 62064

Auction House Christie's

Headquarter London, United Kingdom

Availability sold

Condition pre-owned/vintage

Sale name Design

Sale Location London, United Kingdom

'Tunisie' bookcase

Wood, painted steel and embossed aluminium sheet
circa 1952
Executed by Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé
166 x 353,5 x 62,5 cm / 65 ¾ x 139 1/8 x 24 5/8 in

Catalog essay Designed in 1952, the Tunisie bookcase was intended to furnish the rooms of Tunisian students resident at the International University Campus in Paris. In all, forty of these bookcases were provided for the Maison de la Tunisie. The bookcase was then produced in job lots by the Steph Simon company under the name of Bibliothèque Ateliers Jean Prouvé, in order to respond to the demands of the educational and residential market. The bookcase incorporates several solutions tried out in the past. The principle of sliding doors was developed by Jean Prouvé for furniture intended for Jan Martel in 1930. The principle of the cube system is derived from a joint production by Pierre Jeanneret and Perriand in 1940-47 in which the cubes are arranged in staggered rows. Finally, in a bookcase designed in 1949 Charlotte Perriand developed cubes in folded aluminium. The variations in colour have been devised by several artists, Nicolas Schöffer, Silvano Bozzolini, Sonia Delaunay and Charlotte Perriand, who produce different sketches, which play on the empty spaces and the coloured areas. The alternation of the cubes, colours and their modulations make the bookcase travel along the wall like a piece of jazz music, regulated and improvised at one and the same time and bring to life a certain musicality in the elements. An endlessly renewed harmony emanates from the Tunisie bookcases, making this timeless work into a Design icon.

Literature For a variant of this model:
Jean Prouvé, éditions Galerie Jousse Seguin-Enrico Navarra, Paris, 1998, p. 154-155.
J. Barsac, Charlotte Perriand un art d’habiter, Norma, Paris, 2005, p. 348-357.
J. Barsac, Charlotte Perriand, l’œuvre complète volume 2, 1940-1955, Norma, Paris, 2015, p. 366, 369, 371, 372, 373, 374, 376-377, 378-379 et 380-381.
J. Barsac, Charlotte Perriand, l’œuvre complète volume 3, 1956-1968, Norma, Paris, 2017, p. 510.

Provenance Private collection, acquired around 1995

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