French Designer Andre' Sornay

In some ways, Andre' Sornay simply spent his life in the wrong place. A highly innovative French furniture designer who countered revered modernists Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau and Charlotte Perri among his contemporaries, he spent his professional life working in Lyon rather than in Paris, the epicenter of early 20th century style and sophistication.

He was like Charaeau was for Paris, but unlike Chareau, Sornay wasn't well known outside his town and region. Andre' Sornay is one of the original French modernists. But the world revolved around Paris, so he didn't get much attention and publicity. Thanks to renewed interest from collectors and experts, and the publication of recent monographs on his work- including Signe' Sornay by Marcelpoil and Andre' Sornay:1902-2000 by Lyon dealer Thierry Roche- the designer is now getting a second look.

Sornay's cabinets, chairs and tables, which typically feature clean, simple lines and bold geometric forms, hinted at a number of coming trends. Although he frequently used exotic woods like rosewood, mahogany and sandblasted Oregon pine, he was also among the first designers to celebrate more utilitarian materials such as plywood. He would construct many of his pieces-small side tables, for example- from plywood boards finished with luxusrious veneers. The edges would be exposed and you could see the layers of wood. At the time that was very avant-garde. Sornay also developed a range of pieces that could be easily assembled and disassembled- a precursor to IKEA-style, flat pack furniture.

Sornay was born in 1902 and in 1918 entered Lyon's School of Fine Arts. But with his father's death the following year, he soon had pressing practical need for his design skills when he was appointed head of his family's furniture business. Until then, it had produced copies of traditional 18th- and 19th-century pieces, but Sornay didn't waste any time transforming the business to match his personal interests. In an auspicious move, he ceased all manufacture of period reproductions in 1920 and began developing his own collection of contemporary furniture with purist lines and little superfluous decoration, even as he completed his education. He became as much interior designer as furniture designer along the way. frequently creating entire rooms for his Lyonnais clients.

In the late 1920s, Sornay devised the technique for which he became most recognized, cloutage, a method of studding the perimeter of veneered furniture panels with long lines of tiny brass nails. The technique, which he patented in 1933, added a minimalist decorative detail that became Sornay's signature. He began using cloutage on everything from cabinets to multi tiered tables; the distinctive armchairs he made during this period marry angular bases, including arms that terminate in cantilevers, with simple rectangular backrests where a delicate border of nails frames the heavily grained wood.

Sornay continued to experiment with new manufacturing techniques in the following decades. In the 1940s, for example, he developed a system of using long metal or wood bolts to hold furniture panels together, allowing for quick assembly and disassembly. In time, Sornay ceded control of the company to  his children, though he still acted as an adviser and draftsman. Production ceased in 1999; Sornay died a year later.

Although few furniture collectors knew about Sornay as recently as the 1990s, his star has been steadily rising. By the late 1990s, American clients were tiring of elaborate late-18th-and early-19th-century furniture and Art Deco. They were ready for something fresh and unknown to many of them. The designer's creations are still more accessible than those of most of his peers. Sornay is probably the least known of the French modernists, and his prices are as high as the others. It's rare that a piece will go above $40,00 or $50,00. The other French modernists can go for millions.