french brutal.

There is furniture that serves a very specific purpose – such as the wedding chest or the wing chair. And some define an entire lifestyle: Where would the „coffee table books“ be without the idea of the coffee table? A smaller low table, usually rather narrow and long, so it fits between sofa and armchairs and you can enjoy your coffee lounging casually instead of being served at the dining table, as in times gone by. It’s a modern lifestyle piece – and so it became extremely „fashionable“ in the fifties and sixties. (Some also see the rise of television as a reason for its spread: coffee tables were low enough to not obstruct the view of the TV set.) Very famous today are, for example, the french ceramic tables by Roger Capron or the Cloutier brothers Jean and Robert. 

But here we have something very special, found on our last Provence tour and probably a unique piece: a heavy lava stone slab, lies on a black steel frame. In it are deeply engraved graphic forms, a multibeamed sun and a rhombus surrounded by ellipses.

These sofa tables were created by the French ceramic artist Francois Chaty, who, like Picasso, had his studio in the ceramic town of Vallauris on the French Riviera. Chaty’s works are rare, and we have never found the same motif more than once.