André Sornay was one of the most innovative designers of the 20th Century, but because he lived and worked in Lyon, France rather than Paris, he is not as well known as contemporaries such as Le Corbusier and Prouve. Sornay studied art at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Lyon, but quit school at the age of 17 when his father's death made him head of the family's furniture-manufacturing company. Highly influenced by the Bauhaus and De Stilj movements and uninterested in the overly-elaborate styles of Beaux-Artes and Art Nouveau, Sornay began his career as Art Deco peaked, and as new materials and