174: WARREN PLATNER, Occasional tables from a New York interior by Thierry Despont, pair < Object & Home, 14 April 2021 < Auctions

Object & Home

14 April 2021

Object & Home

174

Warren Platner
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Occasional tables from a New York interior by Thierry Despont, pair

Knoll International
USA, 1966
chrome-plated steel, glass 18¼ h × 16 dia in (46 × 41 cm)

estimate: $1,000–1,500

result: $1,820

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provenance: Private Collection, New York
literature: Knoll: A Modernist Universe, Lutz, ppg. 74-75, 166-167

Works from a New York Interior

Designed by Thierry Despont, The Client Whisperer

The present lot comes from a Manhattan, New York interior designed by renowned architect and interior designer, Thierry Despont. A charming and gregarious Frenchman, he is beloved by wealthy clients across the globe for his empathetic approach and, in his own words, they come to him “because they know I’m a very good listener. My best clients have always been people who had very strong ideas, and it was my role to hold the pencil.” Trained at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris and Harvard University, his list of projects and clients is astounding in both its size and diversity and includes the Statue of Liberty, The Getty Center, the Ritz Paris, Bill Gates, and Calvin Klein. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Letters (1989) and Chevalier, Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur (1999).

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Warren Platner 1919–2006

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Warren Platner (1919—2006) was an American architect and interior designer whose seminal furniture collection produced by Knoll International remains an icon of 1960s modernism today. In 1941, Platner graduated with a degree in architecture from Cornell and soon went to work for the renowned Raymond Loewy and I.M. Pei between 1945—1950 later earning the Rome Prize in architecture in 1955.

While working in the office of Eero Saarinen during the mid-1960s, he released a collection of chairs, ottomans, and tables that has been in continuous production by Knoll ever since. The collection is both elegant and understated consisting of steel wire furniture that rests on a sculptural base of nickel-plated steel rods. The following year he opened his firm Warren Platner Associates later designing the highly regarded interiors of the Ford Foundation headquarters in 1967, Georg Jensen Design Center in 1968, and the glamorous Windows on the World restaurant of the World Trade Center, New York in 1976.

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