Loewy archive goes to auction in one lot

The archive of industrial designer Raymond Loewy is set to be auctioned in France for an estimated ú600 000. Loewy’s widow Viola is selling the collection.

A spokesman for Faure & Rey, the French auction house handling the sale – at Rambouillet on 10 June – says the archive is offered “intact as a single lot. It constitutes the greater portion of Loewy’s life’s work as represented by drawings, files of correspondence, patents, press clippings, memos, models, films and sound recordings”.

According to Faure & Rey, the archive, in the form of a Raymond Loewy Centre or museum, “would be a major contribution to scholarship in the field of design”.

Loewy died in 1986, after a career in industrial design spanning 50 years.