François Monnet

François Monnet, born in 1946, worked in the early 1970s for Kappa, a manufacturer that partnered with Uginox — a French company specialising in stainless steel since the 1960s. It was one of those encounters that define a period: a steelmaker looking for outlets for a material until then confined to industrial kitchens, and a designer who saw in it a material for furniture. Stainless steel entered the living room.

Monnet drew from it a recognisable vocabulary: folded or curved sheet, brushed or mirror-polished steel, smoked glass tops, no visible screws. With Joëlle Ferlande he designed the Zig-Zag shelving in 1971, five modular elements in satin steel, published the same year in La Maison Française no. 248.

His biography remains slight — his production is identified by its manufacturer more than by his name, as is the case for many French designers of that decade. Galerie 90 brings together four of his pieces: a coffee table, a table, a lamp and the Zig-Zag shelving.