The Furniture of Pierre Sala

Piere Sala (1948-1989) is a French post-modern furniture designer, best known for his pencil-based designs. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about him online, so I'm cobbling this page together from what I see on auction sites. A monograph about him was released in late 2024, which I have not bought yet. I'll be basing my short overview of his life in the following paragraph on the blurb.

In the 1970s, Sala was an experimental theater producer. In the 1980s he switched to furniture design. The Piranha chair (pictured later on this page) of his first collection was an immediate success. The Clairefontaine collection, based on oversized pencils and notebooks, launched his career internationally. In the meantime, he also designed interiors for public and private spaces. His early death left many projects and ideas unfinished.

My interest in primarily in his pencil-based furniture, possibly because it reminds me of the old pancake restaurant I used to go to as a kid. But in the interest of showing a more complete picture (and in a nod to a previous life as an art history student), I'm also showing some of his other work.

Clairefontaine collection

Mostly pencil-based. Other school-themed items are also used sometimes, like notebooks and crayons.

Ensembles

A chair, a stool, some shelves and a lamp

Four chairs surrounding a table, flanked by two floor lamps

Individual items

Desk shaped liked a spiral-bound book, with pencils as legs — Desk, which can open up like an actual notebook.

Small round table with pencils as legs — Table

Table lamps with a spiral-bound notebook as a base, a pencil as the holder, and then a round globe on top. — Lamps

Storage unit with plastic bins using pencils — Storage unit

Blackboard held up by oversized crayons — Blackboard

Other collections

Yellow chair with red geometric decoration — Hirondelle chair 🔗

Red and white chair with parts of it bitten away — Piranha chair 🔗

Yellow, white and green table supported by a single striped pole on a base — Table 🔗

Odd grayscale coffee table — Mikado table 🔗

White table with green stripes, the legs are positioned as if it were walking — Walking table 🔗