Early Pierre Chapo 'B10' Bookcase or Room Divider in Solid Elm
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Dating from 1975, this open bookcase that doubles as a room divider is an early example of the designer's work. It is meticulously crafted in solid elm and features an open framework with adjustable shelves, allowing for a variety of configurations. The beautifully matured honey patina of the elm highlights the natural character of the timber and lends the piece a warm, timeless presence.
Pierre Chapo (1927-1987) was born in a family of craftsmen and trained as an architect at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Already from a young age, he felt the need to roam the world. He was only twenty-one when he left France in order to spend the next few years traveling through England and Scandinavia. In December of 1951, he was living back in Paris, where he met his future wife, Nicole. Their meeting was the beginning of a lifelong union. Together, the lovebirds travelled through South and North America being captivated by the architectural diversity. Back in France, he and his partner Nicole set up Société Chapo in 1957. Société Chapo was a design workshop and gallery in one where he showed his own creations. However, Nicole also presented her ceramics, and textiles here and they even exhibited other great designers of that period. In 1958, they opened their famous gallery at 14 Boulevard de l'Hopital. Chapo's work originated by means of special commissions that could later be adapted to universal needs. Throughout his career, Chapo combined his interest for contemporary design with his love for traditional craftsmanship. In his designs, he was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's balanced lines, Corbusier's research on proportions and the ideas of Bauhaus. The three principles that motivated Pierre Chapo were 'material, form, and function.' He measured his furniture by means of golden ratio and used elmwood as his preferred material. Unfortunately, Chapo fell ill, and he died in 1987, however, until his last day, he kept on designing and working.
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From Clamart to the Luberon
Chapo's path into furniture ran through architecture, not craft school. At the Beaux-Arts he met his future wife and collaborator Nicole Lormier, and their travels together — through Scandinavian workshops, an Arizona cabinetmaker's shop, Central America and Germany during his military service — sharpened an eye for structure that owed as much to the Bauhaus as to the American masters he encountered on the road.
In 1957 the couple opened a gallery in Paris's 5th arrondissement and a manufacturing workshop in the suburb of Clamart, showing Chapo's furniture alongside sculptors such as Isamu Noguchi. Samuel Beckett commissioned the so-called Godot bed in 1959. In 1966 Chapo moved the workshop to Gordes in Provence, where he kept refining his technique until his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in January 1987 — by then he had patented the Chlacc laminated-wood system (1979) and was developing 'Go', a construction built from flat panels of solid wood.
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