Gallery Hopping

The opening of a Project Space upstairs at Larry Gagosian’s new gallery has given Paris new design clout. On view until May 21 are French architect Jean Nouvel’s first limited-edition design pieces: a metal Tool Box storage system and a hyperlong Table au KM, whose name is a wink at the table’s 20-foot length. “You can dine at one end, do your work in the middle, and keep the far end for amusement,” Nouvel advises, “or invite forty to dinner.” In a limited edition of six, costing €70,000 each, the table must be ordered at a minimum length of four meters (13 ft), but Nouvel’s architectural structuring means the length, supported by a lamination of solid oak, hornbeam and acacia, can be increased “to infinity”. (With prices to match, one might wonder?) 4 rue de Ponthieu, 8th. website

Galerie Downtown François Laffanour, whose forte has been the work of 1940s legends Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret, is moving into the contemporary scene with young Japanese architect Junya Ishigami’s playful Picnic collection, on show through May 31. His “family” of curvy, crosshatched wire chairs is dressed and shod in adorable crocheted covers, right down to their booties. 33 rue de Seine, 6th. website

Through June 4, the Galerie du Passage will be showing Graphiques Electriques, Modernist-influenced lighting designed by French Vogue’s former artistic director Patrick Hourcade, whose forms have echoes of the Bauhaus, Mondrian and 85-year-old French artist François Morellet. 20 Galerie Véro-Dodat, 1st. website

In the 1970s, when it was really avant-garde to do so, Baron and Baroness Gourgaud commissioned designer Maria Pergay to create furniture, lighting and objets d’art for their summer home in Corsica. The recently rediscovered Pergay, who is still working, was once a favorite of such patrons as Salvador Dalí and Pierre Cardin. “Nothing is more beautiful than steel,” she affirms, and her treatment of the cold material is surprisingly sensuous, sophisticated and luxurious. Eighteen pieces from the Gourgaud collection will be auctioned at Artcurial on May 24, including a stainless steel corner sofa (estimated at €30,000–€40,000); a spiral-shaped stainless steel coffee table with beige, brown and red lacquer effects (€40,000-€50,000); and the unique glass-and-steel Gerbe dining table (€35,000–€45,000). website