Jean-Michel Frank

This lot is offered together with a certificate of authenticity from the Comité Jean-Michel Frank.

Dr. François Debat was a pivotal figure in the Parisian decorative arts scene of the 1920s and 1930s. An accomplished doctor and the founder of a pharmaceutical laboratory in Garches, a city on the outskirts of the French capital, Debat was also a forward-looking aesthete and an avid collector. He founded the periodical Art et Médecine and organized the first edition of the Salon de la Peinture in 1936 in the neighboring city of Saint-Cloud, to which his decorator and artist friend René Crevel participated. The home of Dr. Debat was a carefully curated space in which Art Deco design took center stage, as evidenced by the corresponding image of the present Jean-Michel Frank desk in his private study. Made with an exquisite combination of rosewood and vellum, the desk embodies its creator's predilection for a minimalist design, most evident in the curved edges of the tabletop and sculpted bases on either side. The present desk is the only known example of this model.