It’s sad, but true: many of the designers we write about being amazing influences on the world of design are male. Men are not more talented than women, of course; there are plenty of women who have made their mark as well. One that we’d like to write about today is Maria Pergay.
Many of the design influences we write about have passed away since the time they designed in was usually in the Mid Century or earlier, but Pergay is a hybrid of sorts: she’s both an influence and still quite relevant and contemporary. If we only had two words to use to encompass Pergay, they’d be: stainless steel.
Stainless steel is a dynamic material. It’s sharp, flexible, shiny, bold, masculine, linear and curvy. You can do a lot of things with this material, and many designers over the years have. But none quite like Maria Pergay. Describing herself as having a very real connection with the material, Pergay has done amazing work with steel, using it in ways that others just haven’t done before.
Her work: which includes chairs, tables, and other furniture pieces, vary wildly. Some of her lines are quite curvilinear, featuring strong curved forms that dominate the composition. Other pieces explore a very French idea of layering, featuring work that seems to peel away to reveal something else. Yet even more work considers intricacy with the stainless steel. A
New York Times article described recent work—shown at her age of 79—to be explosive, showcasing furniture made of multiple pieces of irregularly-shaped steel designed in a way that is both dynamic but also still reliable and dependable-looking.
Born in Moldavia in 1930, Pergay immigrated to Paris with her family in 1937. She studied at several prestigious schools, like the L'Idhec as well as the atelier of Zadkine. Her career began in the 1950s, and she claims she found the material of stainless steel around 1957. She’s never looked back. Sought out early on for her fresh take on using this material, she became successful quite early on, and she has gone on to create tons of high-end furniture lines starring stainless steel and has worked all over the country. Still working even today, her furniture pieces are usually pretty pricey—stainless steel isn’t cheap—but she continues to push the envelope of design even in her later years.
Many of the design influences we write about have passed away since the time they designed in was usually in the Mid Century or earlier, but Pergay is a hybrid of sorts: she’s both an influence and still quite relevant and contemporary. If we only had two words to use to encompass Pergay, they’d be: stainless steel.
Stainless steel is a dynamic material. It’s sharp, flexible, shiny, bold, masculine, linear and curvy. You can do a lot of things with this material, and many designers over the years have. But none quite like Maria Pergay. Describing herself as having a very real connection with the material, Pergay has done amazing work with steel, using it in ways that others just haven’t done before.
