White Lacquered Perforated Steel Magazine Rack, French, in the Manner of Matégot, circa 1950

Mathieu Matégot (1910–2001) was born in Hungary and came to Paris where he worked initially as a theatre designer before devoting himself to furniture design in the post-war years. Establishing his own Parisian workshop, he developed perforated sheet metal — which he branded ‘rigitule’ — as his signature material, a technique that allowed him to design furniture which was simultaneously industrial in substance and light as textile-work. His influence on the generation of French industrial designers who followed was profound and lasting.

The fundamental proposition of this magazine rack is the dematerialisation of a solid surface by perforation. The piercings open the steel plane to light and air, transforming metal from opaque mass into something analogous to a screen. The white lacquer amplifies the effect: white reads not as surface but as accumulated light, so that the object seems to diminish rather than assert itself in the room. Against a wall, the perforations cast rhythmic shadow patterns that shift with the light, activating the surrounding space through the object’s own geometry.

The proportions (W. 48 × D. 35.5 × H. 50.5 cm) give the piece a near-cubic footprint whose apparent solidity is entirely undone by the open work of the perforations. The attribution ‘in the manner of Matégot’ denotes not direct workshop attribution but the demonstrable influence of his design language on French metalwork of the period, of which this magazine rack is an accomplished and faithful instance.