Vintage lemon coffee table in rattan by Janine Abraham, 1950

Janine ABRAHAM (1929-2005)Lemon table, circa 1950. Rattan table of lemon shape, with magazine rack under the top. Handles worked in wicker. Very good condition. Nice honey colored patina. Some traces of wear (notably scratches on the tray) H 50cm, L 83cm, l 55cmJanine Abraham (1929-2005)Daughter of teachers from Auvergne, Janine Abraham discovered very early an attraction for drawing and wanted to become an illustrator. On the advice of her father, she entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She stayed there for two years, but preferred to focus on furniture design by entering the Camondo school. She graduated top of her class in 1952 and did internships with the decorators René-Jean Caillette, where she learned about rattan, and then with Maxime Old, her former professor of contemporary decorative art. Connected through the journalist Lucien Veillon with Meubles TV, a contemporary furniture publisher in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine district, she began her career as a solo designer and designed for this publisher a portfolio table called 117 and the 102 sideboard with strict lines. She then collaborated with Rougier -a company still specializing in rattan- for whom she designed a whole series of furniture (bed, armchair, dressing table...) which was presented at the Marseille Fair in 1954. She was hired by Jacques Dumond's agency where she met Dirk Jan Rol. Janine Abraham and Dirk Jan Rol decided to form a couple in life and in work and signed their names to all their projects until the end of their careers. They founded their agency in 1957 while already exhibiting in 1956 at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, alternating their participation in the Salon des Arts Ménagers as well as the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, where they presented furniture where the recurrence of rattan marked -through the volumes thus created- their vision of modernity. Reference : 244843