Atelier Jespers: Once-forgotten Furniture by Candilis and Blomstedt

In 2015, art dealer Clément Cividino travelled to holiday village Les Carrats in Port-Leucate, France, in hope to find pieces of furniture designed for the village by French modernist architect Georges Candilis with a Finnish interior designer Anja Blomstedt. Georges Candilis had designed the holiday village in early 1950’s as well as the furniture in the holiday studios and the graphic identity of the village.

Candilis and Blomstedt, who also worked with modernist designer Charlotte Perriand at the time, had an idea of cheap and very simple furniture that are easy to disassemble and transport. The Le Carrats furniture consist of simple pieces of solid wood or plywood held in place with aluminium angle brackets. The pieces were made and assembled by the Sentou workshops, and the rare edition of only a few hundred pieces was solely intended for Les Carrats holiday village.

During the decades, the furnished apartments were sold from one owner to another, and Cividino didn’t find a single piece of the furniture he was looking for in the apartments during a long day of searching. Eventually he was told about a technical space underground that could only be reached through a narrow and low tunnel. In the underground space laid hundreds of disassembled pieces of the original furniture by Georges Candilis and Anja Blomstedt.

Atelier Jespers, founded in 2015 by Jean-François Declercq and Elsa Sarfati, will present the collection for the first time in public during Brussels Art Fair BRAFA in the end of January 2016 alongside with a Hexagon living unit by Georges Candilis and Anja Blomstedt. The furniture highlight the heritage of the French modernist trio Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé with whom Georges Candilis collaborated as an architect on projects including the Cité Radieuse in Marseille, France, the University of Berlin in Germany and the Atomic Centre in Marcoule, France.

The selection is a part of Clément Cividino’s private collection, and it consists of pieces such as chairs, shelves, benches and stools, some of which has already been acquired by Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, and Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein in Germany. The exhibition is also curated by Clément Cividino, who is specialized in Candilis’ work. •

Georges Candilis and Anja Blomstedt – Furniture for Les Carrats at Atelier Jespers in Brussels, Belgium, from 22–31 January 2016.

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