OLIVIER MOURGUE, MONTREAL ARMCHAIRS, AIRBORNE ED., 1967

Olivier Mourgue (1939-)

Pair of Montreal armchairs

Mobilier National-Atelier de recherche et création, Airborne éditeur, France, 1967

Fiberglass structure, foam and Mohair velvet by Maison Misia (fabric free choice),
chrome-plated metal feet

Height 65 (38 cm) x Depth 63 x Width 87 cm

PRICE ON REQUEST

References:

ARC-Mobilier National public collection, inventory number GMT-22591-014

Commissioned by the Mobilier National for the French pavilion at the 1967 Universal Exhibition.

Olivier Mourgue's collaboration with Mobilier National dates back to the 1967 Montreal World's Fair, for which he created a set of seats and tables to furnish the Salon d'Honneur in the French Pavilion. The contract (May 9, 1967) stipulates that the designer must provide a project including full-scale plans, a report on materials and upholstery, and a study of the salon's overall décor. The prototypes studied and executed by ARC to Mourgue's designs resulted in a first edition, entrusted to the Airborne company, of thirty armchairs, ten poufs and six coffee tables bearing the "Mobilier national" label. The internal structure of the seats, in molded polyester, forms a shell that is covered with foam and covered with a fully removable red jersey cover.

Literature:

-Meubles et décors, n°840, august-sept 1968

-Commercial catalog Airborne, 1970

-Japan Interior design, special edition, 1971

-« Mobilier national 1964-2004, 40 ans de création » catalog

Biography:

Winner of the First International Design Award and Grand Prix national de la création industrielle, Olivier Mourgue is a graduate of the École Boulle. He enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and, while still a student, designed the Joker seating range in 1959 for the publisher Airborne, with whom he collaborated for almost 20 years.

In 1964, in the same vein, he designed the Whist range in steel blade and black leather, of which we offer here a rare chaise longue in silvered leather, complete with chaise longue and ottoman.
The following year, he innovated with the Djinn range, which proved a great success with the public. The models were selected by Standley Kubrick to equip the space station in his film 2001: "A Space Odyssey", and now feature in the permanent collection of New York's MoMA.

Collaboration with the firm gives it unprecedented industrial support. He is the symbol of the Airborne brand. After developing the "Joker", "Whist", "Djinn" and "Montréal" series, he set out in search of a creation that would apply his research into nomadism and living close to the ground. With this in mind, in 1968 he designed the anthropomorphic "Bouloum" chaise longue in two versions: outside in fiberglass and inside covered in fabric.

A close friend of Jean Coural, administrator of the Mobilier National, he was commissioned by the institution's Atelier de recherche et création that same year to design the cafeteria at the Maison de la Culture in Rennes, in collaboration with Pierre Paulin. He designed a "cafeteria unit" and the famous Caddie chair, which was produced in small series by Erbos solely for the project, without being edited.