Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/496780
near Avignon with his second wife, Maia Wodzislawska, and continued to work, even in retirement. It was America, full of post-war optimism, a growing crop of baby boomers and full employment that provided the biggest market for Paulin's designs. (He was always better known in the U.S., where the Museum of Modern Art bought six of his designs for its permanent collection.) In 1966, The New York Times wrote about his Trapeze chair, shown at the furniture fair in Cologne that year. He and other French modernists of this time, who included Pierre Guariche, Olivier Mourgue and Alain Richard, had some support from a project by André Malraux and the French government. But it seemed as though the modernist baton was passed from Scandinavia through France and straight to Italy. The famous show of modern domestic design in 1972 at MoMA had 100 pieces—all Italian. In 1972, the biggest commission of Paulin's career, an entire ensemble for the American company Herman Miller, fell apart. Several decades passed when it seemed he dropped from view. Then, starting a decade ago, fashion designers, most particularly Tom Ford, Azzedine Alaïa and Nicolas Ghesquière, began snapping up vintage Paulin. Alaïa and Ghesquière not only decorated their homes with Paulin, they commissioned Paulin furniture for their showrooms and fashion shows. Last December, Louis Vuitton put on an exhibit in Miami, "Playing with Shapes," of 17 of those never-produced Herman Miller pieces. "My father always spoke about the [unrealized] Herman Miller project as one of his big regrets," says Benjamin Paulin, who met Michael Burke, chairman of Louis Vuitton, after Ghesquière incorporated Paulin's Osaka sofas for the Resort show in Monaco last year and then proposed the "Playing With Shapes" project. The Tapis-Siege, or carpet armchair, was one piece, a sort of instant conversation pit. Ligne Roset introduced several new Paulin reissues at Maison et Objet in Paris in January. Magis continues to sell Paulin designs as does Artifort. At Design Miami in Basel in June, three galleries, Jousse Entreprise and Galerie Kreo along with Demisch Danant will show vintage Paulin. In May, the 17 pieces in the Demisch Danant show in New York will be inside a gallery tented in stretch jersey, an homage to Paulin's preferred material. Among the work, a Ribbon chair upholstered in a Jack Lenor Larsen fabric and a piece never before seen in New York, a smoked plastic bookcase designed for what now seems like a quaint idea: Pompidou's Smoking Room in the Élysée Palace. "We're showing the breadth and depth of his work. How sophisticated and complex it was," Demisch says. Pieces will be priced from $9,000 to $100,000. In October, the Pompidou kicks off its show, which is sure to have surprises. "Cloé Petiot sent me a picture of a model I had never seen before," says Paulin. "My father was so prolific that I still discover a lot of things." 190 CULTURED Paulin's Dos à dos chaise lounge, 1968 It was America, full of post-war optimism, a growing crop of baby boomers and full employment that provided the biggest market for Paulin's designs.