Alexandre Noll

French designer Alexandre Noll perceived the creation of furniture to be a true art form. All his objects were handmade and unique artifacts. Noll’s approach to furniture making and sculpture parallels his interest in the originality of relationship between humans and nature. Using natural materials and biomorphic forms, Noll blurred the line between furniture and sculpture, and revealed the organic continuity in all objects, whether functional or aesthetic. A recluse and reticent man by nature, Noll turned down a teaching position at the Ecole Boule, Paris’ famous school of furniture making, saying that he preferred to keep his methods a secret.

Like George Nakashima, Noll had a spiritual relationship to wood and the trees from which they came. To them, the tree represented both a natural thing and an intellectual idea, and it possessed both a use value and a philosophical value.