03 Maxine Snider
If there ever were a case of life imitating art, it would
surely apply to Maxine Snider. Case in point: It was while eyeing
the art deco artwork of Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, Jean Prouve, and
André Groult at the library in the Musee D'Orsay in
Paris that the
Chicago-based furniture designer first became enamored with early
20th-century design. "When you travel, you have time to focus on
your favorite passions, and I found myself going back to that
museum and paying attention to all the great furniture that had
been done in the past," says Snider, whose first collection is
appropriately called the Paris Series.
"It has a lean and light scale ... even a feminine scale,"
she says of the boxy cherry and mahogany pieces often teetering on
sinuous, saberlike legs. Winner of the
Chicago Athenaeum
Distinguished Furniture Award, the made-to-order Paris Series,
starting at $2,200 and sold through designers, now comprises more
than 35 ideas, from elegant writing tables and dressing stands to
upholstered settees, salon chaises, and lounge chairs, all
incorporating what Snider refers to as "the French sensibility."
Like her Grande Salon Table and Paris Writing Table, which
both feature a serpentine-shaped gallery at the back and faux ivory
escutcheons, a signature detail that references the hardware shown
on early art deco designs. "There's something about shapes and
forms, playing lyrical shapes against others that are strict and
retrained, that become a sort of language in the collection,"
offers Snider. "I see my furniture as very minimalist, but people
respond to it as softer, more midway between something very severe
and something traditional." Paris Series by Maxine Snider, (312)
527-4170, www.maxinesniderinc.com Pictured:
Vienna bed, Salon
chaise, Collector's table