Jean Prouvé opened his own smithy in Nancy 1923, and shortly thereafter produced his first furniture made from thin sheet steel. Right away, Prouve s sparse, geometric aesthetic appealed to avant garde architects such Robert Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier, who commissioned ironwork from him, and in 1929, invited Prouvé to jin the new Union des Artistes Modernes, a group of artists and designers championing the Modern Movement. Besides creating furniture, he also explored designs for pre-fabricated housing, constructing dwellings for the homeless. But by the 1960s, his austere style seemed passé and he fell foul of fashion´s whims; as a self-taught designer he was also routinely excluded by the architectural establishment. His reputation may have further suffered from his own appetite for collaboration, which could make his exact role in architectural projects difficult to identify. Happily , this state of affairs changed in the 1990s when Prouvé emerged again, as his sensibility chimed again with the activities of contemporary like Jasper Morrison and Konstantin Grcic.