Jean Prouvé started his career as a 15-year-old in 1916, when he trained as a metalworker in the atmosphere of the École de Nancy, where his father served as director. He began to concentrate on sheet metal in 1924 and he opened his own workshop, where he fully developed his expertise in the material. The quality of his work was appreciated and commissioned by some of the most celebrated architects of his time, including Robert Mallet Stevens, Eugène Beaudouin , Marcel Lods, Le Corbusier and many more. He became one of the founding members of the Union des artistes modernes in 1930, and his furniture design was displayed in group exhibitions. In 1947, he began to operate his own factory in Maxéville, France, called “Ateliers Jean Prouvé,” where he made mass-produced furniture as well as specialized commissioned products. He continued to work with architects and became known and sought-after for his innovation in prefabricated buildings and houses. The business ultimately failed in 1952, though Prouvé continued to work with some of the best modernist architects in France. He is credited as a pioneer of prefabrication, who concentrated on the essence of material to produce exceptional work. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, MOMA, The Hammer Museum, the Museum of Fine Art Houston, and many more preserve his designs. His work continues to be exhibited domestically and internationally, with a notable retrospective conceived by the Vitra Design Museum in Weil/Rhein entitled Jean Prouvé - The Poetics of the Technical Object that debuted at the Kamakura Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, Japan in 2005.