The rarity of Jean-Michel Frank’s coveted parchment-covered cabinets makes the present offering a particularly exciting opportunity for Design collectors. The superior craftsmanship and timeless elegance of this piece is on par with Frank’s celebrated practice as a minimalist tastemaker in 1920s and 1930s Paris. Sumptuous works such as this one hold a special place within Frank’s œuvre and best embody his singularly chic style.

The creation of the present cabinet coincides with a turning point in Jean-Michel Frank’s career. As the stamped numbering on the back of the cabinet indicates, the piece was executed around 1930, the decisive year during which Frank became the creative director and co-owner of Chanaux & Cie (formerly known as Chanaux & Pelletier). Following his appointment, the company continued to build a solid reputation overseas through an increase in new commissions and numerous articles in the British and American press. Frank’s enduring collaboration with Alberto Giacometti, illustrated in the collection of Michelle Smith in lots 49 and 67, further legitimized the company’s artistic credibility on a global scale.

The enduring collaboration between Frank as a designer and Chanaux as a cabinetmaker was most fruitful in their combined efforts to create unique pieces of furniture that best transcribed their ambitious aesthetic vision. Frank was indeed one of the first creators to employ such materials as shagreen, straw marquetry and parchment and to apply them directly onto more modest wooden surfaces like oak and sycamore. One of Frank’s most legendary creations is the parchment-clad dining room and living room in the De Noailles residence, characterized by walls covered from floor to ceiling in the delicate material. The result is an incredibly sophisticated interior with an unparalleled atmosphere of calm and elegance. The living room of Templeton Crocker’s penthouse in San Francisco similarly utilizes parchment on walls and furniture in an extravagant, irreverent manner. “I entered a room that Jean-Michel Frank just completed,” French critic Roger Lannes wrote in 1939. “Somehow, quite inexplicably, the room conveys a secret mechanism that exudes silence and solitude.”

Jean-Michel Frank’s masterful use of parchment only further attests to his status as an all-encompassing creator. Equally as brilliant a furniture designer as an interior decorator, Frank limited any artistic intervention to the bare minimum and confined ornamentation to the essentials. His style relied on simple straight lines that accentuate the primitive and most essential character of a piece or place. The present cabinet constitutes the perfect example of formalistic simplicity and balanced proportions combined with the understated luxury of its highly textural material. Minimalistic yes, but also designed to please the senses and to respond to Frank’s signature pursuit of quality and refinement. Its superior craftsmanship, chic simplicity and overall well-preserved condition make this cabinet an important highlight in the Smith collection and embodies Frank’s ideals of luxurious minimalism.