Pair of round martini tables by Mathieu Matégot [1910-2001]

Each of these stylish occasional tables has a perforated metal top with raised surround on crossed tripod legs. The original yellow finish showing through the later white painted applied over the years. Circa 1950s


About Mathieu Matégot :
Born in Hungary on April 4, 1910, Mathieu Matégot spent four years at the Budapest School of Fine Arts before becoming a theater set designer. In 1931, he moved to Paris, where he worked as a window dresser, producing his first rattan objects on metal frames in 1933.  As a prisoner of WWII, while assigned to a sprocket factory, he had the idea of building a crate from scraps of perforated sheet metal. In 1945, on his return from captivity, he opened a furniture workshop in Paris. It was here he decided to exploit this material in the form of an easily machinable perforated sheet, patented under the name Rigitulle. For some fifteen years, he produced a series of furniture, seating, lighting and other objects in light, often unexpected shapes. He also used rattan, brass, formica, glass and wood. Mategot was a member of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs (SAD), between 1952 and 1958 and regularly exhibited at the Salon des Arts Ménagers and the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.  As demand for his designs grew, he set up an atelier in Casablanca and an agency in London. He died in Angers in 2001 at the age of 90.