Maison Desny Style Art Deco Box Macassar Wood and Chrome, France 1930s

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Description

This beautiful French Art Deco decorative box is reminiscent of Desny's work. It features Macassar wood sides with a chromed … Read more This beautiful French Art Deco decorative box is reminiscent of Desny's work. It features Macassar wood sides with a chromed metal lid and structure. The piece is also a blotter, with its curved bottom. Superb quality, French Art Deco at its best. There is no visible maker's mark.
Measurements: 6.69 in wide (17 cm) x 3.75 in deep (9.5 cm) x 2 in high (5 cm).
About:
The Maison DESNY, founded by Clément Nauny, whose surname results from the contraction of "DESsin" (drawing) and "NauNY," produces furniture, lighting, and silversmith.
Clément Nauny was born in 1900 in Oran. He arrived in Paris in 1918 and frequented the artistic milieu, including the circle of avant-garde artists, and befriended Alfred Masson and Alberto Giacometti. It was in 1927 that this autodidact founded the DESNY house and opened a boutique at 122 Boulevard des Champs-Élysées.
Indirect light fixtures and modernist goldsmith pieces with a shape often close to sculpture will be an immediate success. The creations of this visionary, audacious, and astonishingly pure are part of an avant-garde movement due to their minimalist and asymmetrical geometric shape.
Clément Nauny is not alone in creating decorative art. He joins forces with two designers: Maurice Nauny, his brother, and Louis Poulain, as well as a workshop manager, Henri Dagneau.
Most DESNY luminaires are made of nickel-plated metal and glass; some, called "light decorations," have the sole function of lighting up the dark corner of a room. Sometimes, mechanisms allow these lamps to adapt their shape and vary their light intensity.
The best-known clients of the DESNY house are the patron Pierre-David Weill, Georges-Henri Rivière, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and the Maharajah of Indore. Clément Nauny also collaborates in creating objects for famous fashion houses such as Chanel, Lucien Lelong, or Worth.
The Great Depression caused by the 1929 financial crash got the better of the original approach of the house of DESNY, and in 1933 the house ceased all activity.
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