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Andrée Putman.
Photo via tumblr.com |
Some other issues in the life of The Devoted Classicist last January prevented the mention of the passing of design legend
Andrée Putman at age 87. A current web-article in
1st Dibs Introspective offered a tribute to Madame, leaving a reminder that mention here was long-overdue.
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Andrée Putman.
Photo via DeZeen. |
I had the great pleasure of first meeting Andrée Putman in 1980 when I was an employee of Beyer-Blinder-Belle Architects & Planners in New York City. The firm had been hired by Phyllis & Fred Pressman (of the store Barney's) to renovate a beach house in Southampton, Long Island, they had just bought. The office was set up as a team format and I was assigned to contribute as the historic preservation component. It was a 1920s Norman style cottage with the most charming potential, sited directly on the dunes. Sadly, it was that location that proved to do its undoing, and long-story-short, the house was demolished before much design development to renovate the existing house was accomplished. But, fortunately, I was on the team long enough to meet the Parisian interior designer that the Pressmans hired for the project, Andrée Putman. Her concept was to decorate the house, not in the French provincial style, but with classic modern furnishings from the 1920s and 30s, and a monochromatic color scheme in only black, white, and grays. My friend
Peter DeWitt was project architect and he designed a new house that was a larger, somewhat post-modern version of the original house and it was furnished as planned by Putman. (Although Fred Pressman died in 1996, Phyllis Pressman, who remarried, still owns the
house to my understanding).
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Ecart's 'Satellite Mirror' by Eileen Gray, 1927.
Photo via Ecart, Ralph Pucci. |
Andrée Putman did not become well-known in the U.S., however, until the 1984 success of
Morgans Hotel in New York City. It opened to great fanfare at the forefront of the rise in the trend of boutique hotels in this country and helped make Putman a 'name' in the U.S. design media.
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Ecart's 'Bergere' by Jean-Michel Frank, 1930.
Photo via Ecart, Ralph Pucci. |
Andrée Putman's fame in hotel decoration followed with acclaim for other prestigious interior design projects, including the interior scheme for Air France's Concorde. But Putman's greatest influence in twentieth-century design was through her furniture company
Ecart, available in the U.S. through Ralph Pucci. As well as producing some of Putman's own designs, Ecart ("trace" spelled backwards) re-issued some of the great designs of the 1920s and 30s by Jean-Michel Frank, Eileen Gray, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and others, making them available after decades out of production.
Studio Putman has been headed by daughter Olivia Putman since her mother's retirement several years ago.
More about Andrée Putman may be found in books available for purchase at discount from
The Devoted Classicist Library. The 2005 book by Stephane Gerschel,
PUTMAN STYLE, gives biographical information as well as examples of her work. The 2009 book
ANDREE PUTMAN: COMPLETE WORKS by Donald Albrecht, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, is a monograph of the grand dame's work from 1980.
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