A Total Work of Art
Les Palmiers
“With him, there was no sudden, passing interests, but rather a slow, inwards cultivation of beauty.” — Bernard Dunand on his father Jean Dunand
The U.K. has a rich and varied design heritage, and as a country we helped create and define numerous formal styles and archetypes of decorating; from Christopher Wren (1632-1723) to Richard Rogers (b. 1933) and Norman Foster (b. 1935), there has been continual and continued innovation in design, pushing the boundaries, not only materially speaking, but socially, in terms of ways and modes of living and working. However, ignoring architecture in the formal sense of planning, designing and constructing buildings, and focusing purely on interior style, it seems we’re seeing stagnation; indeed the style of the twenty-twenties is hard to define, unlike that of the twentieth century, wherein each decade is instantly identifiable by a very specific aesthetic that was new, original and spoke of the society around which it was created. Now, more often than not, we see an amalgam of periods and genres, or rather, eclectically appointed interiors, which — in the absence of newness —have become a calling card for a good many contemporary designers. It was a decorating style first explored in the fifties by avant-garde visionaries such as French fashion designer Roger Vivier (1907-1988), who shocked the Parisian beau monde with his elegantly appointed apartment on the Quai d’Orsay; a suave and prophetic mix of Cycladic idols and French court furniture, displayed against a backdrop of white walls and abstract art by the likes of Jean-Michel Atlan (1913-1960), Serge Poliakoff (1900-1969) and César (1921-1998). Interestingly, this contemporary preoccupation with iconic design has resulted in the focus being shifted from the overall interior to individual pieces of furniture and lighting, which has only served to turbo-charge the cult status and desirability of pieces by the likes of the Giacometti brothers, Jean Royère (1902-1981) and Les Lalanne, with the result that auction prices are going through the roof. In turn this has resulted in numerous knock-offs and copies, often produced by those designers whose clients’ purse strings don’t stretch to originals, or, merely those that want to make a quick buck off the back of another designers work. Perhaps as a result of this penchant for artistically curated interiors, the design world has lost sight of the idea of an interior being a Gesamtkunstwerk, or rather, a “total work of art”.
“Les Palmiers” smoking room, from the residence of Mademoiselle Colette Aboucaya, Paris (1930-1936), image c/o Phillips
This absence of originality has only been compounded by the sale this week at Phillips London of Jean Dunand’s (1877-1942) extraordinary masterwork Les Palmiers (1930-36) for £3,289,500, after a pre-sale estimate of £1,500,000-2,000,000. In this exotic lacquered smoking room — designed by Dunand at the peak of the French Art Deco movement, to be installed at the Parisian apartment of Mademoiselle Collette Aboucaya — the twentieth century appetite for modernity can be seen to its full effect. It was a decade earlier, in 1921, that the artist first started to make lacquer panels and screens, at which point his prodigious talents were recognized in full and he was invited by Maurice Bokanowski, the president of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs, to design a “smoking room for the private apartments” of the French Embassy Pavilion at the landmark Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. At over three meters high, the resulting interior was truly monumental in scale, with walls of black lacquer, surmounted by an ascending ziggurat ceiling — the first time Dunand had used lacquered wall panels to delineate an entire room. Highly acclaimed by critics, though perhaps not universally so, with the Journal des Arts Décoratifs describing it contemporaneously as “a funeral smoking room, a retreat dreamed by hypochondriac smokers”, it was bang on the zeitgeist — inspiring storied French milliner Madame Agnès immediately to commission Dunand to design her studio at rue Saint-Florentin; with the resulting interiors a glistening showcase in textured gold, matte gold and gold laque arrachée. Also exhibited at the 1925 exhibition, were Dunand’s lacquer-work designs for the car interiors of coachbuilder Henri Binder — comprising dashboards, interiors of doors, seats and handles that were partially or fully decorated with coquille d'oeuf or laque arrachée. Later, in 1928, the Aboucaya family, originally from Algeria (following in the footsteps of other Mediterranean Jewish families including the Camondo and the Ephrussi), acquired Binder’s company with the aim of producing the haute couture of automobiles — entrusting Dunand’s workshop with the realisation of lacquer for e.g. imitating shagreen or covered with gold.
“Les Palmiers” in its original setting at the residence of Mademoiselle Colette Aboucaya, rue Monceau, Paris, with a daybed designed by Katsu Hamanaka, image c/o Phillips
So impressed was the young Colette with Dunand’s unique mastery of the ancient, almost forgotten techniques of Japanese lacquer, that she commissioned him to design a smoking room for her own rue Monceau apartment; in accordance with the instructions of her decorator, Gerard Mille, Dunand designed an angular, Cubistic stylised palm grove. An unrivalled masterpiece, Les Palmiers embodies the very notion of streamlined luxury and craftsmanship that came to characterise the French Art Deco. By choosing modernity, rather than the eighteenth-century pastiche favoured by the majority of the haute bourgeoise — a tactic employed largely so as to earn acceptance amongst the upper classes — Colette belonged to a great lineage of women, such as Suzanne Talbot, Jeane Lanvin (1867-1946), Louise Boulanger (1878-1950) and Nancy Cunard (1896-1965), who, freed from the conventions of the past, had their finger firmly on the pulse of modernity.
A scheme of the greatest refinement, Les Palmiers is exceptional on several counts; not only is it of unsurpassed quality and execution, but it is one of the very few interior schemes by Dunand to have survived intact — and in an excellent state of preservation — perfectly encapsulating the talents of the artist at his peak. Luxurious and elegant, this remarkable suite of panelling exploits a graphic use of line, painstakingly built up through layer upon layer of lacquer. To achieve such a highly original ensemble, Dunand used differing and highly-skilled techniques within the already demanding medium of lacquer; integrating lacquered and engraved metal plates, which add texture to the surface, whilst the configuration en décroché creates a sense of depth — immersing the viewer, floating like cigarette smoke, amongst an exotic forest of silver and black palm trees. The abstracted decoration, emblematic of the art of the period in its development of geometric motifs, bears witness to the luxurious and sophisticated lifestyle of a lost era. An iconic expression of savoir-vivre of the roaring twenties, Les Palmiers was considered a national treasure by France, and only recently was allowed to leave the country.
Dunand’s works elevated the privilege of the time to the level of art — and unlike today, such elite collectors understood that when commissioning such avant-garde interiors, patience, truly, was a virtue; the lacquering and sanding processes employed by Dunand could last for many months, or even years, depending on the scale of the project. Building on the French history of decorative arts, Les Palmiers offered a contemporary, masculine interpretation of the sort of heavily ornamented boiseries seen in eighteenth century hôtel particuliers — indeed many consider cabinet-making in art effectively ended in the 1930s. Today we often see rooms that reproduce the panelling of for e.g. Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) or the iconic black glass and stainless steel doors of Portaluppi’s (1888-1967) Villa Necchi Campiglio, but very rarely, if ever, do we see a room commissioned that is a true expression of one artists unique vision; as radically new and influential as those great twentieth century artists, designers and ensembliers who, whilst without reinventing the wheel, still shocked and excited with their original and innovative creations.
Whist such work then, as now, is only for the very, very wealthy, without patrons, Botticelli’s Venus for e.g. would never have existed — and it’s a crying shame that with more Billionaire’s per capita than at any other point in history, we rarely see such original interior commissions. Granted, the 0.01% have an entirely understandable desire for privacy and a preponderance of NDA’s mean’s that many of the greatest contemporary creations will never see the light of day (Not so long ago for e.g. the haute couture embroiderer Maison Lesage created an extraordinary embroidered headboard for a private client in Europe that cost well in excess of £1m). However, the sage words of Sir Terrance Conran come to mind: “Furniture and food are ways that people define their attitude toward life. They’ll buy better stuff if it’s offered to them.” It’s the duty of any good designer to make the most of a budget, to support artisans and craftsmen, and above all, to show a lay client exactly what possibilities are out there; who knows, were it not for Colette’s interest in the family business, Les Palmier might never have been commissioned.