Prouvé's iron doors become coveted design trophies

Before Jean Prouvé designed his famous demountable houses and utilitarian furniture, the French architect created two large wrought-iron doors for the Pavilion de Nancy at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. This encounter with modernist design sparked Prouvé's fascination with strong, malleable sheet steel, which he would later use extensively in his work.

Prouvé's steel symphony

Four years after the Exposition, Prouvé was already applying this material in designs for doors, partitions, windows, and even elevator shafts, which he would go on to mass-produce. These components became hallmarks of his residences, municipal buildings, ocean liners, and houses, where they helped create streamlined, machine-like structures.

Until 1953, Prouvé produced this range of tactical-looking elements at his factory near Nancy, France. Many featured porthole windows that let in sunlight and made the panels lighter, an essential element for ease of transport, particularly useful for his relief structures intended for airdrop delivery.

A collector's dream

After leaving his workshop in the 1950s, a cash-strapped Prouvé used castoffs to build his own home in the hills above Nancy. This self-built abode served as a personal manifesto, where doors and panels designed for mass production were reintegrated into a domestic setting.

Now, those same components have steadily seeped into the collector market. Some, like AD100 designer Steven Volpe in a soaring Manhattan apartment, or The Row for their Paris store, use them as originally intended. Others exhibit them as works of art, given that examples are owned by New York City's MoMA and Paris's Centre Pompidou.

As Volpe explains,