Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/32301
He created his iconic rattan Tripod chair in 1949, which won the silver medal at the Milan Triennial that year and is now represented in the collection at the Pompidou. Motte, sometimes referred to as J.A. Motte or André Motte, was the 1948 valedictorian of his class at the l’Ecole des Arts Appliqués à l’Industrie in Paris, and was hired right out of school to work at Bon Marche. He created his iconic rattan Tripod chair in 1949, which won the silver medal at the Milan Triennial that year and is now repre- sented in the collection at the Pompidou. By 1953 Motte, Michel Mortier and Pierre Guariche had formed a short-lived partnership called L’atelier de Recherche Plastique or ARP (the plastic research workshop). And when people weren’t ready to buy so many modernist pieces for their homes, the government stepped in with public commissions for several members of this group. Referring to Orly airport, completed in 1961, Demisch says, “A cultural minister said, ‘We’re greeting foreign visitors at an architec- turally forward airport with furniture from two centuries ago.” Thus Motte was hired to do interiors for airports not only at Orly but at Roissy and Lyon. In fact, once you start looking, Motte seems to have been every- where, as a member of Group 4, with Caillette, Richard and Dangles; working with Paul Andreu on a master plan for the Paris Metro (his plastic seats can still be found); and creating furniture for the Town Hall in Grenoble, including a knockout 1965 ebony table. Still, Motte and the others are known to only a select few. “If you put these things at auction, no one would know what they were,” Demisch says. “It looks like something you’ve seen a hundred times, but you haven’t.” Danant, who has been collecting these pieces for a decade, has been selling them since 2008 to buyers in England, Russia, Israel, Switzerland and the US. He says, “We always had a good response and interest from collectors who knew nothing about it but instinc- tively understood the aesthetic and the concept.” Motte’s work, in particular, has all the right ingredients for smart collectors, Demisch says. “It’s functional. You can use it. Yet it’s very smart about the proportions.” 58 CULTURED Top, a sketch for an interior project by Antoine Philippon and Jacqueline Lecoq, contemporaries of Motte; above, Motte’s Dining Table, 1965, made from Formica and wood on an aluminum base.