MARIA PERGAY

Maria Pergay’s career began while creating ornate metal elements for window displays in Paris’s fashionable boutiques. With her creativity piqued, she began experimenting with silver, soon producing a complete collection of distinct, contemporary pieces in the late 1950s. The vast uniqueness of the silver objects set the tone for a lifelong tendency to challenge current trends and work outside the boundaries of her contemporaries. In addition, Pergay’s silver work functioned as a catalyst for her innovative works made of stainless steel. Pergay’s usage of this material not only became her trademark but also changed the face of French decoration in the 1970s. All the while, furniture design remained a harshly male-dominated field which relegated design work by women to trite ‘decoration.'

As a mother of four without formal training particular to furniture, nor outside support, Pergay pursued her creative instincts working relatively alone. Drawing from a multitude of sources, she was provoked by antiquity, Japanese art and the innate nature of her materials — conjuring a voice so individual that many of her pieces would not receive recognition until years after they were created. Much like Eileen Gray, whose genius was also widely neglected because of her gender, Pergay created for her own pleasure — exhibiting and selling to clients, while quietly receiving important private commissions. In this way, she maintained a diverse and lengthy career, working enthusiastically even today.

Maria Pergay has never belonged to a distinct design movement or group of designers, an individual content indulging in the framework of her own imagination rather than the influences of her contemporaries. She is among a handful of designers of her generation who are still avidly working today — a remarkable accomplishment. Pergay’s enthusiasm is undeniable and her creative flow is unstoppable.