Prouvé’s second life
Deyan Sudjic talks with Rolf Fehlbaum
Photography by Lee Funnell

Rolf Fehlbaum has a genuine love for the work of Jean Prouvé, whom he has always seen as a reflection of a sensibility that is close to, if different from, Charles and Ray Eames, the historic figures who have become so closely associated with Vitra. For Fehlbaum, the Eameses were at the lighter end of the aesthetic spectrum, and Prouvé was at the heavy end. But both managed to achieve a timeless quality based on a certain restrained feeling for the organic qualities of technology. The very first piece that Fehlbaum bought for the Vitra Design Museum’s collection was a Prouvé chair. Every day at home he eats off a Prouvé Trapese table, which spans a hulking 3.3 metres. But it has taken almost 20 years for Vitra to begin manufacturing the work of the man Fehlbaum calls ‘the least discovered of the great 20th-century designers’.

The problem was not so much the issue of the licensing rights – which until recently have belonged to a German firm that made strictly limited re-editions of just a few of Prouvé’s designs – but the engaging sense of inquiry that Fehlbaum brings to everything that he does. It was important to Fehlbaum to get the philosophical and ethical issues ironed out before rushing into production. Fehlbaum’s own Prouvé pieces show their age. They are chipped and worn by use and the passage of time. Would they lose their charm fresh from the icy perfection of the factory, their metal finished in epoxy coating rather than lacquer? The only way to find out was to make them. Was the technology that Prouvé had used still relevant? Happily, the answer turned out to be yes. ‘Laser cutting and computer-driven machines make it possible to do things that weren’t economic to do manually any more’. And most fundamental, was there any point in putting a 70-year-old design into production? ‘Many re-editions are really unnecessary’, says Fehlbaum. ‘Why would anybody but a collector want a Frank Lloyd Wright side chair, for example?’ For Fehlbaum the only justification for rescuing a piece from the museums and collectors is if it can still be regarded as contemporary, even if it is from another time. He finds the continuing relevance of Prouvé in the rough, mechanical quality of his work, which he sees as having affinity with both the Eameses and Vitra’s own way of doing things. ‘Great design always fulfils two criteria, which might seem to be contradictory: it must have the feeling of following the rules of necessity, and at the same time it must express a sense of the personal’. It was only after having resolved these questions in his own mind that Fehlbaum began to consider the technical details.

Exactly which pieces – and which versions – would form part of the Prouvé edition? In many cases, despite the full co-operation of the Prouvé family, it is hard to be precise about which of a number of variations of a particular design should be regarded as authoritative. The first group is made up of four tables (Fehlbaum’s particular enthusiasm), three chairs, a lamp and a knife, and there is more to come.