Mathieu Mategot tray

Mathieu Mategot tray year 50, in perforated tole. Diameter approx. 34.5 cm. Traces of use. Designer and tapisseur, Franco-Hungarian Mathieu Matégot was born in 1910 in the suburbs of Budapest. After graduating from Budapest's School of fine arts in 1929, he traveled abroad, like many young people his age. He spent some time in the United States and Italy before settling in Paris in 1932. He works as a stage designer and calibrating specialist for Parisian places in vogue such as the Folies Bergère and the Galeries Lafayettes. In the years following World War II, Mathieu Matégot began to design furniture, especially with rattan mesh and metal frames. Like many artists of his time, he joined the French resistance. Captured by the Germans, he was forced to work in a German factory. He was released in 1944 and obtained French nationality. After the war, Mathieu Matégot began the creation of a Parisian workshop devoted to furniture and experimental and handmade objects. Its designs feature a variety of materials: metal, glass, formica, wood, fabrics and leather. His major successes include metal tubes and perforated metal sheets thanks to a technique he invents, the Rigitulle, in 1952. The machine that he develops and which allows to bend metal parts like pieces of fabric is used in many of his creations like the Java table lamp, Soumba tables, Baghdad lamp, satellite pendants and Nagasaki chairs. After a few years, Mathieu Matégot opened a second workshop entitled Société Matégot in Casablanca, where it is able to expand its production, including small decorative objects such as loose-links, baskets, magazine doors or occasional tables. . Mathieu Matégot stops the furniture design in 1959. He goes to Angers where he dedicates himself exclusively to the creation of abstract tapestries until he dies in 2001.