Brushed Steel Furniture - Sido & François Thévenin

Furniture in brushed steel by Sido & François Thévenin.
Brushed steel, brass, velvet, golden discs.
France.
1950s.
230 x 86 x 106 cm (sofa); 114 x 83 x 90 cm (armchairs).

Designed by Sido and François Thévenin, this brushed steel furniture consists of a three-seater sofa and two large armchairs, all adorned and resting on brass balls. François Thévenin and Gisèle Sitodi, known as Sido, met at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in the early 1950s. In 1959, they met the architect Jacques Couëlle and decorated, with him, famous troglodyte villas and "sculpture-houses" along the French Riviera, where François and Sido settled in 1958. To decorate these houses, they designed furniture in steel, bronze, and wrought iron. This furniture dates back to the early years of their creative partnership, before their style evolved towards increasingly fantastic and organic compositions.

A similar sofa, with its upholstery also adorned with golden discs, albeit a few years later, was exhibited at the Magen H. Gallery in New York; another, exactly similar, at the Patrick Fortin Gallery in Paris.

Sources 

Atlas de l’architecture et du patrimoine, s. v. « Sido Thévenin », Paris, 2002.
Valérie de Maulmin, « Les Thévenin, sculpteurs du quotidien », dans Connaissance des Arts, décembre 2010.