Design classics from France at the French designer and cabinetmaker Pierre Chapo Markanto is under design experts repeatedly an insider tip. His work from the 1960s and 70s today regularly five-digit prices at international Designauktionen. Together with his son Fidel Chapo Markanto in Germany presented his designs, which are produced in extensive manual work and with great attention to detail still in Chapos Studio in southern France exclusively. Born in 1927 in Paris, Pierre Chapo studied architecture at the ecole of des Beaux Arts. Mid-1950s several trips were made to America, where he attended also Taliesin West, the famous Atelier and House by Frank Lloyd Wright. This travel sustainably had a big influence on his later work. Already in 1960, Pierre Chapo received the Gold Medal of the city of Paris at an exhibition of Arts and crafts.
The late of 1950s Pierre Chapo started with his own designs, which he himself together with his wife, the painter and sculptor Nicole Lormier, also to the Marketing of furniture care. The distribution was first exclusively founded in 1958 Gallery Chapo”in Paris. This business, where, also, Isamu Noguchi were offered light fixtures or furniture from Knoll international, was one of the first interior decorating shops for high-quality design in France at all. Similar to the nowadays well-known Gallery Steph Simon, who supervised the work of Jean Prouve and Charlotte Perriand, was the Gallery of Chapo”as personal sales of Chapo designs. The furniture was in 1967 in Clamart near Paris. in 1968 it moved to southern France, where then in Gordes at Avignon, which today still existing Studio Chapo Gordes SA the family Chapo”was founded. Pierre Chapo created characterized by modernity in the 1980s timeless furniture, which are characterized by their shape and their longevity. Looking at the material, his fondness for the hardwood of the elm and the oak is striking.
His work is the surface of the wood with your natural structure at the same time an element of the design. As a designer and craftsman, Chapo celebrated the beauty and uniqueness of the wood, at the same time he wanted to convey the respect for nature here. This used the properties of the material Chapo and tried to get as far as possible without metal connections, using mostly well-thought-out pin connections for the construction of objects.