Unique, Chic and Mysterious
Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval
“Art itself is ever-changing and difficult to grasp. Art is in museums, at auctions as much as on street walls, Snapchat, sketches, workshops, designer’s mind. Although we don’t necessarily know where to expect it, when we see it, we immediately recognize it — art comes from within. Still, the art market is booming, centred around the question of financial value. But in art, there are objective values — such as historical, technical, innovative, and aesthetic — as well as emotional values — attraction to an object, nostalgic memories, judgements of taste, etc. Many of those criteria are volatile and can lead to financial disappointment.” — Julie Blum
Anne-Sophie Duval first opened her eponymous Art Deco gallery in 1972 on the ground floor of the seventeenth century Hôtel de Châteauneuf on Paris’ stately quai Malaquais. Trawling flea markets and auction houses, in those early years Duval took patience and delight in polishing “old brassware vases” to reveal lacquer decoration by Jean Dunand (1877-1942) and in re-discovering forgotten masterworks; ethereal glass tables by Saint-Gobain, the articulated modernist furniture of Pierre Chareau (1883-1950) and the fantastical, neo-classical bronze creations of Armand-Albert Rateau (1882-1938). It was, as it happens, a pivotal year for the art market, in which Deco design, after half a century spent languishing in the doldrums, once more became desirable as it ever was, championed by decorators such as Jacques Grange (b. 1944), Robert Couturier (b. 1955) and Stephen Sills (b. 1951). Duval, perhaps somewhat presumptively, asked the young couturier and collector Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019) (who was at the time internationally renowned as Creative Director of French fashion house Chloé) to create the scenography for her booth at the Biennale des Antiquaires de Paris. Not only did Lagerfeld agree, but he devised a radical decor — with floors tiled in black industrial rubber, an illuminated glass and stainless steel “stage” and walls mirrored, or clad in emerald green lacquer panels — against which were displayed a mesmerising selection of works by the likes of Süe et Mare, Dunand and Fernand Léger (1881-1955). Setting the cat amongst the proverbial pigeons, established dealers looked on with both circumspection and respect as it was the first time modernist works (including an extraordinary translucid statue by Leon Leyritz (1888-1979) and a bronze bust of French model and chanteuse Kiki de Montparnasse (1901-1953) by Pablo Gargallo (1881-1934)), had been exhibited alongside the great cabinetmakers of the ancien régime. It was in November when the legendary collection of fashion designer Jacques Doucet (1853–1929) went up for sale at the Hôtel Drouot that avant-garde talents such as Pierre Legrain (1889-1929), Marcel Coard (1889-1974), Paul Iribe (1883-1935) and Eileen Gray (1878-1976) were once and for all thrust into the spotlight. The runaway success of Art Deco auctions, to which Duval contributed, saw the pièce de résistance of twentieth-century design fetching increasingly astronomical prices; while forgeries flooded the market, quality pieces became harder and harder to get hold of, and ergo, collectors became ever more reliant on the expertise and know-how of the great Parisian gallerists.
After years of experience and learning Duval had developed a taste for more unusual creations, inlaid with sumptuous materials such as shagreen (which had been employed as early as the eighteenth century, but only for small, discreet objects, and certainly not entire commodes, as seen in the work of André Groult (1884-1966)), eggshell, ivory and mother-of-pearl. Gradually, with the increasing popularity of Jean-Michel Frank’s (1895-1941) elegant and ultra-refined work, radical in its use of “poor” materials, such as straw and terracotta, the gallery finally found its niche, as it were, and began offering a sharper selection. “When Yves Saint Laurent and I met Anne-Sophie Duval, we were immediately seduced by this beautiful, young, tall woman,” enthused collector and patron of the arts Pierre Bergé (1930-2017). “I was lucky enough to live near her gallery. I knew the place well. It was then, at the age of 25, that I started collecting art pieces … I often went to Anne-Sophie’s and it was enchanting every time, a lesson of integrity, a new way of seeing, because [she] had an exceptional eye.” It was towards the end of the twentieth century that the Art Deco market really began to thrive, both at auction and in new antique stores springing up around the cobbled streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It was during those formative years, thanks to the painstaking research of art historians such as Felix Marcilhac (1942-2020) and Jean-Jacques Dutko, that a panoply of monographs were published, and names such as Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933), Paul Dupré-Lafon (1900-1971) and Eugène Printz (1889-1948) emerged from the ashes. To coincide with both the publication of Rateau’s monograph, written by his son, François (revealing, finally, the “refined and barbaric style” of this unique creator) and the gallery’s twentieth anniversary, Duval organised the first ever retrospective of the designer’s work. So as to better reflect her taste evolution, Duval took the opportunity to redecorate, work which was, rather extraordinarily, overseen by the “Don Quixote of taste”, revered French architect, designer and interior decorator François-Joseph Graf. The resulting “ton sur ton” interiors, elegant in their understated simplicity, at least in some part, owe their unique colour scheme to the galleries proprietress, as French artist Patrick Hourcade (b. 1946) recalls: “One day, while Graf was finishing the decoration of the gallery desperately looking for which colours to use, I met Anne-Sophie who announced to me with relief: ‘He found it. It is the colour of my sweater!'…” Famous for his collaboration with French haute couture fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin (1867-1947), for whom he designed the infamous Arpège scent bottle, Rateau’s designs and accessories were presented at this seminal exhibition alongside some of his most emblematic, yet elusive creations; particularly remarkable, a Pompeian-style armchair (1919), decorated with fish and shell motifs (one of eight, created for the patio surrounding the indoor pool at the Manhattan home of collectors Florence and George Blumenthal), a gold lacquered commode with swan-shaped handles and an “Oiseaux” low table (1924), somewhere between sculpture and functionalism, its shallow marble top supported by four dark patinated bronze birds, carved in full relief.
Julie Blum, director of Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
A selection of ceramics on display at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
The 1990s were a time when people would buy what they liked, rather than what was signed, whereas today, people tend to do the exact opposite. It was an attitude to collecting perfectly suited to Duval’s unique approach, as she took far greater pleasure in finding an exceptional work by an unknown artist than she did in showing a minor piece by a superstar designer such as Frank, Groult or Ruhlmann. In essence, Duval sold a way of living, or rather, a style — blurring the traditional codes of luxury and, in a similar way to Jacques Grange or Andree Putman (1925-2013), had an immediately identifiable “paw”, as the French put it, and a keen eye for objects which resulted in one of the most important galleries of twentieth-century decorative arts in the world. Julie Blum, the current director, and daughter of its late founder, took over in 2008 at a time when the growing success of international fairs such as Design Basel and Maastricht, seemed to signal the end of brick-and-mortar spaces (more recently, the same threat from online sales has, thus far, failed to have any discernible impact, despite apocryphal warnings from the art press). However, Blum has expertly steered the gallery through choppy waters in a direction that makes it equally relevant to a new generation of decorators and collectors, looking for simpler, less adorned works, as when it first threw open its doors more than fifty years ago. It’s been over a decade now since I first visited Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, and despite my having read architecture as an undergraduate, at the time, my knowledge of twentieth-century Art Deco was ropey at best; very little was taught in terms of the great French ensembliers, with the focus instead being on modernists such as Gray, Corbusier and the utopian architects of the Bauhaus School. As such, objects I discovered there, including ceramics by Émile Decoeur (1876-1953), Elisabeth Joulia (1925-2003) and Georges Serré (1889-1956), and furniture by Adrienne Gorska (1899-1969) and Eyre de Lanux (1894-1996), was largely unknown to me. However, I was immediately taken by the extreme elegance and sophistication of such works, and indeed it was a formative experience in my artistic education, playing a large part in my going on to found The London List as a publication exploring the work of such designers. One thing that differentiates the gallery is its unparalleled sense of style and, in particular, the way works are presented, a refined balance, difficult to determine, where for example, a straw-marquetry table by Jean-Michel Frank might be juxtaposed against whimsical 1950s ceramics. After all these years, it was an enormous pleasure to finally sit down to lunch with Julie on a recent trip to Paris, who, as one might expect, is incredibly knowledgeable, but also, most importantly, much like her mother — entirely genuine and with absolutely no pretence.
Two vases by Francis Jourdain stand on a console at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
Boxes by Mithé Espelt stand on a Jean-Michel Frank table at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
TLL: You were only around six years old when your mother, Anne-Sophie Duval, first set up a gallery on the quai Malaquais in Paris, but at what age did you start to understand, and for that matter appreciate, the sort of extraordinary Art Deco furniture, by the likes of Armand-Albert Rateau, Pierre Chareau and Jean-Michel Frank, which she helped to rediscover and pioneer?
JB: It took me a long time to realise how lucky I had been to be surrounded by such beautiful objects, but also that I’d gotten addicted to them. Many objects I’d seen in the early days of the gallery are still imprinted in my memories, like a [Gustave] Miklos column, in terracotta with the silhouette of a dancer or the Rateau bronze chair supported by deer — which looked like an archaic treasure in a fairytale decor. Spending my upbringing between my grandparents’ apartment near the Trocadéro and the shops my grandmother, and then my mother, had set up in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, early on I could feel the contrast of atmosphere between the bourgeois taste set in classical style and the modern, simple and delicate lines of Art Deco pieces I would see in the gallery. At a very young age, I wanted to become an Egyptologist and as a lonely child, I would spend most of my time listening to adults’ conversations, talking endlessly about those objects they had just rediscovered. Sometimes, I could feel the enthusiasm, and the emotion in their voices and eyes when a forgotten masterpiece would suddenly reappear. Though in general, I thought adults were spending far too much time talking about objects, diverting too much of my mother’s attention.
The first name I remember getting interested in when I think about the early years is Pierre Chareau. I remember the magic light shining through alabaster lamps and the elegant curves of the stools he designed, at the same time ergonomic, sensual and playful. At the time, he was considered one the most brilliant minds of the Art Deco movement and this little humble man has remained my hero. Some years later, a major milestone at the gallery was, of course, the Rateau exhibition in 1998. I was in my early twenties and had started to develop a radical modernist taste so I was very confused when I discovered his luxurious baroque style, struggling in my mind to bridge the gap between rational or minimalist pieces by Frank, for example, and what I would see as extravagant and elitist gold and bronze furniture! Interestingly, I later discovered the two had collaborated on the decor of Cole Porter’s music room in Paris.
Had it always been assumed from an early age that you would one day work alongside your mother at the gallery, or had you another career in mind?
The world seemed far too large at the time to consider working alongside my mother in her shop; so when I finished high school I went through a long and confusing period. I felt I was interested in so many subjects that at one stage I considered becoming a journalist. Instead, I went on to study law and Chinese at university and after I graduated, I took a year off to travel to the Far East. When I came back, it was obvious to me I would become an architect. At the time, I was also occasionally helping my mother in the gallery and briefly studied Art History at university but hated it and ran away. So, six years later, I graduated from Architecture School at Paris La Villette where I had finally found the mind opener I was seeking. Still, I felt I lacked technical experience, so I moved to London to join a big international firm and work on large-scale construction projects.
Those years were extremely formative and very soon I had the opportunity to run a small project in my own name and to design and build a concept bookshop based in central London. We had a lot of fun and no money, but the flexible metal shelving system we designed, inspired by Chareau, was met with great success. Several concept stores followed in London as well as flat refurbishments in Paris. In 2008, my mother passing away was a bit of a shock, I didn’t expect her to go so soon, even when she was ill. Supported by friends and family who had naturally assumed I would take over, I chose to get involved and moved back to Paris with my young daughter, leaving my architecture projects behind me with no regrets. I spent the first few years exploring stock, archives, magazines etc ... and after a period of “fake it until you make it” — I realised it was all very familiar to me.
When the gallery was first founded fifty years ago, Art Deco furniture, although collected by a rarified group, such as Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, and of course, in terms of gallerists, perhaps most famously, Félix Marcilhac, it wasn’t widely understood and appreciated, and for that matter, sought after in the sense that it is today. Why do you think it is that French modernist furniture, in particular, has in recent years become so incredibly popular?
The early interest of fashion designers and artists like Andy Wharhol, Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent in Art Deco in the 1970s echoes the pivotal role of fashion designers such as Jacques Doucet, Paul Iribe, Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet or Elsa Schiaparelli in the birth of Modern Style. Those amazingly creative minds were the real patrons — even sometimes designers — of the French Art Deco, a new way of life, more feminine, modern and sophisticated. To understand the long years of darkness during the 1950s and 60s, one must remember that after the traumatic shock and horror of the Second World War, people went through a long amnesia of the rich, provocative and vivid culture and counterculture which had bloomed in France during the period in-between the wars. Modernity and progress had become an inflexible dogma, and nobody was left to dare contest the industry and their so-called social and mechanical vision of the human being, promoted by gurus such as Le Corbusier or Bauhaus teachers in exile like Mies Van der Rohe.
So, people did not look back too closely at a whole humanist alternative approach developed by the previous generation of designers and forgot about geniuses such as Chareau, Rateau, Eileen Gray, André Groult and of course, Frank, who all promoted a more poetic approach to modernity. Then in the late 1960s, people started to dream again of a more imaginative and poetic lifestyle, leading to the rediscovery of Art Nouveau which also inspired the Flower Power movement. That’s when the young Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé and the decorator Jacques Grange started to develop a fascination with Art Deco and would come to my mother’s gallery seeking new treasures … [continued]
I think they were not only attracted by materials such as galuchat, straw marquetry, lacquer work, enamel or ceramic glazing for their inherent refinement, but also because those objects triggered a nostalgia for a golden age of total creative freedom, and notably for women.
Then the 1980s and 90s were, again, an interesting period. Thanks to antique dealers, magazines of the period, interior designers and historians, collectors started to gather a better understanding of this exceptionally creative period. The market began to develop with many American clients coming to Paris to buy French Art Deco. On the creative scene, a generation of young French and Italian Post-Modern designers rediscovering Art Deco’s formal language — proposed sometimes with a hint of irony, a pastiche of Art Deco style with industrial materials, techniques and colours. This is also the time when many iconic models by Chareau, Frank or Gray were re-edited by people like André Putman who allowed those creations to reach a much wider audience. Finally, today, people are rediscovering what quality and innovation mean. So, the original Art Deco with its many facets, has become the absolute reference for well-executed, singular and poetic decorative arts.
Anne-Sophie had an extraordinary knowledge, and eye for the best of Art Deco, but, at the same time, she was as enthusiastic about anonymous works, which say, had an interesting detail, or element of finesse, as she was those such as Andre Groult, Franz von Stuck and other great names of the period. I’ve heard from gallerists, increasingly so of late, that they struggle to sell works that aren’t signed, which, seemingly is symptomatic of a market where people no longer, necessarily, buy what they like, but merely what they see as an investment. Do you think en masse there such be less focus on names and a greater emphasis on what it is that makes a work of art or design interesting?
Anonymous doesn’t mean nobody — and because my mother was a pioneer in Art Deco, she looked at many anonymous pieces before she could identify them. Sometimes, it could take months before she would find in some random documentation the attribution she was looking for. Although today, most of the art market is based on attribution, I don’t think finding attributed pieces was her only goal. She would mostly look for elegant and creative designs, quality materials and unconventional details. An orphan piece which could not be attributed would still get great consideration for its mysterious and talented author, hoping that one day he or she might reveal him or herself.
This is a heritage I’m very proud of, the capacity to consider a piece for its inner value before speculating on its attribution and price. Somehow, I feel many of our clients appreciate this approach, letting themselves be intrigued by mysterious objects because they can recognize good design. Recently, I’ve displayed in the gallery a unique pair of large bird cages made of glass with patinated gold metal frames which are extraordinary and poetic. They’re a great example of the type of anonymous work I’m thrilled to display — unique, chic and mysterious.
The gallery has always had a very distinct aesthetic, pared-back and understated, very different to many other decorative arts dealers, with Robert Couturier enthusing “[Anne-Sophie] sold a way of living, rather than an object” — what would you say defines the “spirit” of the gallery in terms of the pieces you choose to display?
I’m not sure I could define the spirit of the gallery, but I could maybe describe how and when it happens. It’s usually when new pieces arrive after restoration and we decide with my friend and talented jewellery artist Vincent Emmanuel Rouxel to rearrange the scenography. Generally, he plays the role of classical taste, while I play disruptive — unless we decide to switch roles and I become the classical one. At first, I always feel a bit surprised, excited and also curious to see how new pieces will fit in. So usually, we don’t plan anything ahead and follow our intuition until our ideas complement one another. The highlight of the day is when we display pieces from our collection of 1920s and 50s ceramics — which always add a magic touch to our presentation.
Ultimately, we tend to avoid stylistic settings which would be too obvious, always looking for an unexpected dialogue between style, materials, colours and shapes — so highly valued pieces might be presented alongside anonymous ones; because there’s a special alchemy which works between them. I think that’s the kind of spirit our clients like to experience in the gallery, a less formal but also more intuitive and subtle relationship with objects. That’s exactly what I tried to illustrate in the book we published last year to celebrate the fifty years anniversary of the gallery — setting up unexpected but coherent dialogues between objects facing each other on double pages. It was great fun to do!
In the 1920s and 30s, Art Deco ebenistes attracted the patronage of the haute bourgeoisie, who could afford their inherently luxurious designs; but interestingly, at the same time, department stores such as Printemps, Galeries Lafayette and Bon Marche championed and sold original works by important designers and decorators of the day for affordable prices, which even now, seems a somewhat radical concept. In a world of fast fashion and homewares, do you think we should see a return to promoting artisan and artist-led design?
This notion of affordability is very tricky. It’s at the heart of the early criticism of the industrial revolution which, by separating maker and designer, inflicted massive social damage on traditional manufacturing as well as aesthetic damage in terms of poor-quality production. The paradox is that craftsmanship, a complex process, can never be reduced to the rationalisation of production while industrialization, a simplified mechanical process, allows larger and cheaper production. So, it’s a catch-22, still very problematic 150 years later, leading to monsters such as Ikea on one side and massive profits of the luxury industry on the other. Today, an affordable object is more or less synonymous with a poor-quality industrial object, while well-made means expensive … [continued]
An armchair and screen by Jean-Michel Frank at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
A pair of mirrors by Mithé Espelt and a Primavera vase at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
In the 1920s in France, department stores had both an economic agenda as well as a social and aesthetic one. Inspired by the utopian vision of the Arts and Crafts movement, they were promoting a renaissance of applied arts. Primavera, for example, the design department of Le Printemps, was an interesting attempt to combine the talent of great designers like Louis Sognot or creative workshops like Céramique d’Art de Bordeaux to promote good quality, well-designed modern furniture and objects for the home. Then, what happened after the war is the natural continuation of this process: makers and designers continue to drift apart, leading some artisans to work for exclusive and wealthy clients while designers — an English word which only appeared in France in the 1950s — set the stage for industrial production.
Also, another interesting thing happened at that time, with some artists such as Les Lalanne and Diego Giacometti — seeking to reanimate poetry into design — improvised themselves as designers. Today, people understand we might have gone too far and that designer-led design could lead to poor design and disastrous environmental impact. By contrast, an original French Art Deco piece, often stamped by both the designer and the maker, would show details born from the rich dialogue between them — quality of construction serving innovative design, refined details in mechanism or decoration, comfortable use and mobility of the objects, and of course local production. Having said that, beauty can hide in the most modest pieces; a nicely woven basket or a hand-made ceramic vase for example can be both affordable, useful and beautiful. So, I’m quite an optimist and I can see many contemporary designers are reverting to local craftsmanship, also in the process of reinventing itself by associating traditional to technological processes.
In the past you’ve talked of how the history of the gallery crosses three generations of women — your grandmother and mother followed, of course, by yourself — as well as highlighting women artists and pioneers who played a determining role in the development of the Art Deco and modernist movements. Women have often been treated appallingly, both during their lifetime, apropos figures such as Eileen Grey, Eyre de Lanux and Charlotte Perriand, and as regards inclusion within the art historical canon. Do you think, now, such trailblazers are given sufficient recognition in comparison to their male counterparts?
In the way I’m running the business, I’ve learnt a lot from both my grandmother, a very feminine character with great decorative skills and my mother’s very pure and open-minded eye for beauty. Both were too smart to indulge in a feminist agenda but I know they would be particularly proud when they could get hold of a piece designed by a woman which would meet their aesthetic. Luckily, the period following the First World War is notorious for having promoted women’s social involvement not only in interior design but in many disciplines. For example, my grandmother from my father's side was among the first female lawyers. So, with such a heritage, I felt I had to support female creativity and stop this macho nonsense which too often reduces women artists’ skills to an anecdotic exception.
When we organised a ceramic exhibition in 2010 with only women artists, I must confess it was merely a coincidence — I was looking for artists of the post-war period who were not already represented by other galleries and I ended up with a list of women. I can not thank my male colleagues enough for having opened the path to such a beautiful show which demonstrated the rich, unconventional, sophisticated and powerful inspiration of female ceramists. More recently, in 2020, we showed in the gallery the work of Mithe Espelt, a completely unknown ceramic artist who considered herself an artisan and refused to sign her work. Consequently, her anonymous mysteriously delicate and exquisite ceramics had circulated for decades in the market and got attributed to a male artist! Thanks to Antoine Candau’s crusade for the recognition of her talent, we published a book telling her incredible story, highlighting the fact that some female artists and artisans simply don’t feel comfortable with an ego-centred market and may prefer to stay humbly away from blinding recognition.
Since the 2009 Saint Laurent sale in which Eileen Gray’s Fauteuil aux Dragons sold for €21,905,000, making it the most expensive piece of twentieth-century design ever sold at auction, we’ve seen Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips set record after record for works by Giacometti, Jean Royère and Jean Dunand et al, including entire rooms, such as, in terms of the latter, “Les Palmiers”, or Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann’s sumptuously panelled salon-dining room for British Press Baron Lord Rothermere. How do such sky-high prices affect private galleries, if at all, in terms of acquiring works and attracting new clients?
When I took over the gallery in 2008, the first prestigious sale I attended was that of Saint Laurent and so I witnessed the build-up to the extravagant record set by Gray’s dragon armchair. Everybody was in shock! Still, such a miracle is likely to only happen once and despite considerable efforts to multiply prestigious sales, the auction market soon flattened to more reasonable extremes. At the time, many professionals, realising that international auction houses had progressively taken over the Art Deco market, were predicting the end of the gallery’s era. As leading actors in the Art market, auction houses are essential to put masterpieces forward to a wider audience. Their easily accessible internet results attract many sellers while some buyers are thrilled to bid at auction which is always an intense emotional and sometimes addictive adrenaline experience.
My feeling is that we need to support rather than threaten one another, and that is why I’m always happy to share information when needed. Overall, quality relationships between dealers and auction house experts are essential to a healthy market. As antique dealers, we live in a different time zone and have the time and opportunity to thoroughly select artists we truly believe in and to develop one-to-one relationships with our clients. If we’re sometimes asked to justify our prices in regard to auction results, clients generally appreciate our selective approach and respect the fact that we are ready to spend a lot of money for a piece we believe in.
On that note, the demand for twentieth-century furniture has resulted in an ever-increasing influx of fakes and forgeries, with 1stdibs recently cracking down on authentication and even the opinion of hitherto respected “experts” no longer accepted as sacrosanct. What impact do you think the trade in fakes has on the market, and can you see any obvious solution?
What we usually call a fake could actually result from many different situations. Some pieces might be wrongly attributed to a more valuable designer — more or less genuinely — while some could be fairly recent forgeries intentionally built to deceive. In the 1980s and 90s, the Art Deco market, thanks to its increasing demand and the apparent simplicity of its design, got quickly invaded by all sorts of forgeries. It used to make my mother very cross as she would consider fakes as unfair competition, putting at risk the market she had contributed to set up. As an expert, she was also discreetly active in clearing out many fakes. The problem is that some good forgers can be really smart and very often know the artist’s work better than anyone else. So the paradox is that they can also be the best experts. The recent scandal following Versailles’ acquisition of a fake chair in 2016 illustrates how delicate this type of situation can be.
In the gallery, our job is to investigate the piece by assessing in depth the provenance, documentation, details, finishes and even sometimes scientific analysis. The goal is to get rid of any reasonable doubts before we put a piece forward in a gallery. An investigation is quite an exciting phase, a mix between knowledge and intuition, while we need to question everything, keeping in mind and accepting that no professional is above a mistake. On a more global level, international auction houses have done a great job to clear the market of the most dubious pieces. Realising a small profit could be worth the reputation they aim for, they supported initiatives such as the Jean-Michel Frank committee or the Giacometti Foundation which are often very helpful. With time, I feel the majority of fake pieces have been identified and the market has cleared out. Sometimes, I wonder where those discarded pieces are now and if they will ever reappear … maybe on 1stDibs!
In 1972, your mother asked couturier Karl Lagerfeld, himself an avid collector, to design her booth at the Biennale des Antiquaries de Paris, to which he agreed. In recent years the worlds of fashion and decorative arts have become increasingly intertwined, often, even, overlapping with stores such as The Row and Saint Laurent displaying twentieth-century decorative arts by the likes of Alexandre Noll, Tiffany and Le Corbusier, alongside their seasonal collections, with an increasing number of designers and brands choosing to launch furniture lines. Do you think fashion's “trend-driven” ethos is having a negative impact on the world of interiors, with respect to society en masse moving further away from artisanally-led design, and towards more transient, cheap and cheerful home decor?
As I mentioned before, Art Deco would not have existed without fashion designers’ patronage so one way or another, those two arts are meant to inspire each other. I think it’s always a good sign of creativity when different artistic disciplines converge to collaborate. This year in June, we will welcome American fashion designer Rosie Assoulin to present her collection in our gallery during fashion week and I’m very excited about this collaboration.
Still, the greatest difference between fashion and decorative arts is that objects and artefacts are meant to increase in beauty with age over several generations while fashion is meant to fade with seasons. I sometimes feel that low-cost attractive objects can be difficult to resist but ultimately, we always end up keeping our most sentimental valued objects — it could be a humble sweater knitted by my aunt —rather than mass-produced soulless products. Ironically, the new trends today focus on reusing, recycling and ethical processes which put large industries in a very embarrassing position!
Out of interest, if today, you were to pick a fashion designer to curate a booth for the gallery at, say, TEFAF, who would it be?
Off the top of my head, I would immediately say Dries Van Noten as both a great fashion designer and a sensitive interior designer. I remember when they opened their flagship store in Paris just next door to our gallery quai Malaquais maybe twenty years ago, it was a shock. Still today, their shop windows are always extravagant, mixing fabric patterns, colours and materials — a breath of fresh air in our classical neighbourhood.
I also admire Amin Kader shops in Saint Germain des Prés and rue de la Paix, inspired by the Italian Renaissance. I go there not only to find exquisite pieces of clothing but also to experience the luxurious décor of the place. Many contemporary fashion designers come to visit the gallery and it’s always a pleasant experience to see which pieces they are attracted to. But if I had the opportunity to ask one of them, I would probably choose Marc Jacobs, a great Art Deco lover and collector, whose innovative approach to styles is very inspiring.
You specialise in the work of twentieth-century modernists, who reframed and reshaped the style of furniture and interiors as we know it. Are there any new, contemporary furniture designers whose work has recently caught your attention?
As you rightly point out, it’s important to remember that most Artist Decorators — also called ensembliers in the 1920s — had the ambition to radically redesign the modern and functional home from head to toe. This was cut to shreds by post-war industrial design, leading the following generations of artists and makers to bypass functional issues. I feel designers are often stuck with conceptual and artistic design, leaving aside the ambition to redefine our way of leaving. Radical agendas are not very fashionable nowadays, and many designers are looking for a direction in which to go. With a background in architecture and Art Deco, I’ve become very demanding in my search for good design. I naturally expect a piece to stand on its three vitruvian legs — firmitas, utilitas and venustas … [continued]
A lacquer panel by Camille Roche hangs above an oak bookcase at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
A tapestry by Guidette Carbonell hangs above a Süe et Mare sofa at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
So when I see contemporary pieces in galleries, fairs or magazines, I realise that most designers get confused between art, technique and function, not knowing on which side to fall. This year at Maastricht, I was struck by the beauty and elegance of a cork console I spotted at Demisch Danant’s booth. Its timeless, sophisticated and simple shape reminded me of Eileen Gray or Eyre De Lanux’s radical talent. When I found out that the console, designed by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, was born out of his collaboration with a traditional Portuguese workshop, I realised that creative dialogue between makers and designers still has a future.
I would also like to mention the subtle and poetic work of Sylvain Dubuisson I rediscovered when I met him recently. There’s a hilarious interview of him in Le Monde, published for the retrospective of his work au Musée d’Art Décoratif de Bordeaux [L’intello du design, dec. 2006] where he ironically explains how his whole career is a series of failures and misunderstandings. Famous for the furniture he designed for Jacques Lang at the Ministry of Culture in Paris in 1997 or the ritual objects he imagined for the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, he keeps a lucid but poetic eye on styles and objects. We can spend hours with his wife Sandra talking about the pieces that we love.
Thinking back on your career in the decorative arts, was there “one that got away”, vis-à-vis a piece you missed out on, or regret not buying, either for yourself or for the gallery?
There are so many pieces that I would have dreamt to have in the gallery, but I’m also hopeful that those might come back one day. The decorative arts market is fairly small and it happened a few times already that a piece that I had missed with disappointment reappeared out of the blue sometime later. Recently, I spotted at auction a beautiful pink abstract tapestry by Vera Szekely which I regretted not acquiring many years ago. There are not so many galleries interested in that type of work and I knew it would fit beautifully with our selection of feminine, powerful work. So I was quite excited, but, on the day of the sale, I mixed up the dates and didn’t get the auction house to call me in time. Finally, I found out the tapestry had not been sold ... so I made an offer, and when the piece arrived in the gallery, it immediately felt like it had to be here.
Who are your favourite twentieth-century designers?
Although I feel this is an impossible question to answer, I naturally have a special connection with the inter-war designers I spend most of my life with. I’ve always been particularly interested in the utopian agenda of the UAM [Union des Artistes Modernes] members who genuinely believed modern design could change the world; a radical, revolutionary and romantic project animated by artists such as Chareau, Gray, Pierre Legrain and Charlotte Perriand, amongst many others. When I was younger, I was quite obsessed with the work of Chareau, who was one of the first Art Deco designers to be rediscovered at the time. His completely original, radical yet sophisticated work had a great influence on me when I studied architecture.
In an ever-changing world, what would you say is the biggest problem facing today's art world, and indeed for that matter, the industry en masse?
Art itself is ever-changing and difficult to grasp. Art is in museums, at auctions as much as on street walls, Snapchat, sketches, workshops, designer’s mind. Although we don’t necessarily know where to expect it, when we see it, we immediately recognize it — art comes from within. Still, the art market is booming, centred around the question of financial value. But in art, there are objective values — such as historical, technical, innovative, and aesthetic — as well as emotional values — attraction to an object, nostalgic memories, judgements of taste, etc. Many of those criteria are volatile and can lead to financial disappointment.
What’s your favourite work of art?
While there’s no one honest answer to that question, I remember an early fascination for the futurist transparent sculptures of Naum Gabo. At the time, I’d only seen black and white pictures of his linear constructions but I felt the fluid geometry of its abstract plexiglass models had revealed to me the secret beauty of space in structure. I found out later that he had collaborated with Serge Diaghilev and was a founding father of the Russian Constructivist Manifesto, Art as the Expression of Life, in 1920. Since then, I’ve always been attracted by lightweight architectural structures, especially the ones designed by Buckminster Fuller in the United States and Georges Emmerich in France. Their research on tensegrity, proposing a whole new approach to gravity, blurs the limits between art, sculpture, engineering, mathematics and design ... an endless field of possibilities.
What was the first important piece of art, or design, you ever owned?
I realise that as a dealer, I don’t personally own most of the objects I buy so I have developed a totally different relationship with ownership from the one a collector would have for example. Sometimes, I may even feel that objects own me and that I owe them to keep them safe from oblivion. I remember acquiring at auction some ten years ago the iconic cork table Gray designed for her villa E1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Although I’d seen its picture in so many design and architectural books, I was definitely surprised when I saw it for the first time.
The two things that puzzled me about this piece were both its lightweightness —the table was designed so she could move it following the radial course of the sun … [continued]
… and its subtle acoustics — the cork top would soften the noise made by cutlery during meals Those two invisible elements are to me what defines Gray’s radical refinement, a poetic and innovative approach to use and function. As the cork table has finally joined the MoMA design collection in New York, I hope people will remember that it had been originally designed to bridge an invisible gap between light, sounds and human experience.
Which artists would you collect if you could?
To be honest, I really don’t think I could ever obsessively collect one artist’s work as I’m afraid I would be too easily unfaithful. Collecting requires a lot of patience and dedication and there are too many opportunities I can’t resist. But if I must drop the name of an artist whose work is special to me, I would mention Guy-Pierre Fauconnet’s delicate animal drawings and paintings. His career as a painter and artistic director for Paul Poiret ended suddenly in 1920 when he died at 38 years old. He left behind rare large-scale paintings — which fascinated Lagerfeld — and a few ink drawings; luckily, a wonderfully delicate collection of his animal sketches is kept at Musée Alfred-Bonno in Chelles, his hometown.
An object you would never part with?
I don’t usually have a too special attachment to objects, but I have inherited a bronze portrait of my grandmother by Germaine Richier which has been following me since I was a child. It took me a long time to understand how it could be the same Richier who had sculpted the very classical bronze head of my grandmother who also created la Mante, la Sauterelle or la araignée. It’s only recently when I discovered her work at the stunning Richier retrospective held at the Centre George Pompidou, that I understood how she would deconstruct a human figure to reveal its animal inner power. The bronze head is now sitting on a shelf under the gallery office window and still watches me with enigmatic eyes.
But on that same shelf, the one where I gather pieces that are not to go anywhere, there’s a modernist lamp by Louis Damon that I’m incredibly fond of. It’s probably the first Art Deco piece I fell in love with, I guess for its perfect playful simplicity. Composed of a metal hemisphere set into a wooden square resting on a metallic circular base, the lamp’s only detail is a delicate bakelite double switch and a simple cord outlet set on its side. Its nice downward light makes you feel secure and its elegant geometry makes me smile just looking at it. Only a few models were produced at the time and I’m not sure the one I have now is the one I used to admire as a child but, until I find another one, I would probably not let that one go.
What was the last thing you bought and loved?
There are a couple of pieces that come to mind, but there’s a tiny brooch, designed by goldsmith Jean Despres and engraver Etienne Cournault in the early thirties, that has a special value to me. I’d been looking for the opportunity to buy one of their special creations since I took over the gallery in 2008 and probably even before. That year, a few months after my mother had passed away, I decided to present an exhibition she had always wanted to do — showing the exquisite painted glass and mirror work of Cournault, a surrealist artist-artisan from Nancy who had collaborated with Jacques Doucet and Pierre Legrain for the studio of Neuilly.
Strangely, Cournault is not very well known except for his brief collaboration with Despres. During their UAM period, the duo produced the most fascinating pieces of Art Deco jewellery by combining Cournault’s tiny shimmering abstract compositions with the delicate, yet geometrical, metal work of Despres. I’d always admired those simple pieces of humble jewellery as the pinnacle of Art Deco refinement — but even when I organised the exhibition at the gallery, they were so rare that I couldn’t get hold of any original pieces. So, a few months ago, one of their lovely brooches appeared at auction — a simple metal rectangle with a glass medallion; there’s no way to describe the trance I was in during bidding but somehow, I knew before the battle had even started that it would be mine...
What’s the best gift you’ve been given?
Le Petit Larousse, an illustrated dictionary with pink pages, listing Latin citations and proverbs I was given when I was around eight years old. Throughout my teenage years, I tried to believe the dictionary was a book to find all the answers but in large part, I was fascinated by its lists of Latin proverbs. Travelling back to the times of the Roman Empire and mythological gods, Latin proverbs such as Alea jacta est, Dura lex sed lex, O tempora o mores, Vox populi vox dei, In cauda venenum sounded hilarious, reminding me of Asterix, my childhood cartoon hero, the smart Gaulois resisting the Roman Empire. My favourite one was the enigmatic Timeo danaos et donna ferrantes, referring to the Trojan horse, which would roughly translate as: I fear my rivals especially even when they give me presents.
What’s your biggest extravagance?
Getting a lovely studio facing Trouville Harbour a few days before the confinement. It’s a shabby and lovely place I escape to as soon as I need to take a breath. I go for long walks on Deauville’s beach after the crowd has deserted the place and pick up all the plastic trash I can find as if they were treasures.
What’s your biggest regret?
Planting the garden I have not yet found...
A selection of ceramics on display at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
The site that most inspires you?
London’s Hampstead Heath, where walking along the many paths, through woods, meadows and ponds, just a few tube stops from St Pancras, is for me a very eccentric thing to do — that’s probably why I like the English spirit. And when you make your way to the landscaped garden of the northern edge of the heath, you discover Kenwood House, a flamboyant eighteenth-century Georgian architectural treasure with the greatest interiors designed by architect Robert Adam and a prestigious portrait collection, amongst which a famous self-portrait by Rembrandt — which makes you travel back in time to a Jane Austen novel!
Where’s the most unforgettable place you’ve travelled?
A few years ago I had the opportunity to follow my yoga teacher for a ten-day retreat in South Africa. My original thought was that a trip to the southern hemisphere to practise yoga might be a little unreasonable — but this adventure soon turned into one of the most intense experiences I ever had with wilderness. We stayed in a lodge called Toro Yaka in Balule, on the outskirts of Kruger Park. So, when I arrived in this simple yet beautiful place set in the middle of a nature reserve, I quickly realised living in the wilderness was more than a tourist attraction. Thanks to the kindness and trust of our guests, we were allowed the most intimate experience with wild animals. I felt their strength and dignity had triggered in me a very deep emotion which has also changed the way I now see myself as a human being. Unforgettable!
Where would you like to go next?
My adventurous heart has always pushed me toward the East. I’ve been lucky enough to visit many places but there are a few countries like India or Japan I would like to know better. When I was a teenager, I promised myself that one day I would take the Transsibérien to reach China by train. I think it might still leave every day from Paris Gare de l’Est at 10.30 pm...
What’s the best souvenir you’ve bought home?
When I travel away from big cities, even for a short distance, I have this little ritual of hunting for traditional kitchen tools like handcrafted ceramic pots or wooden spoons. Spoons and bowls are the two basic tools which fascinate me as they are both archaic and universal. You can find them all around the world, in every culture and yet, I’m always surprised by the infinite amount of possibilities. I’ve now gathered in my kitchen an interesting selection, probably more than I’ll ever need, but when I find one I like, I can’t help but bring it back home, knowing each time use it, it will remind me of the exact time and place I found it.
Tell us about a recent “find”?
A few weeks ago, I went to visit La Borne, a small village near Bourges, famous in the eighteenth century for its earthenware pottery. In the 1950s, it became one of the centres of the postwar ceramic Renaissance when artists like Vassil Ivanoff, Elizabeth Joulia or Jean and Jacqueline Lerat moved there, dedicating their lives to reinventing modern ceramics. Today, thanks to its Museum and Ceramic Centre, the village attracts many visitors from all over the world and is still active in producing earthenware pieces; I’ve been told that in the village, there are as many kilns as there are inhabitants.
If you didn’t live in Paris, where would you live?
It would have to be London, where I lived for eleven years. I had a fantastic experience working there as an architect. Since my daughter moved to study in England, I take every opportunity to meet her in London where I still feel a very creative and international dynamic, very different from Paris.
If you had to limit your shopping to one neighbourhood, in one city, which would you choose?
Les Halles, once described as le Ventre de Paris — the belly of Paris — by Emile Zola, where I live now, is quite a strategic spot connecting Le Marais and its museums, shops and restaurants to Beaubourg and the Forum des Halles. La rue des Gravilliers and la rue Chapon — next to a small Chinese district — and rue au Maire nearby, are full of wonderful gastronomic shops where I can find amazing local products. Once a week or so, I go with my father to my favourite restaurant, Chez Nenesse on rue de Saintonge, where I have the best foie gras poelé I know of. This dish is the reason I could never become a full vegetarian!
What’s your favourite room in your apartment?
When I work from home uninspired, I realise I keep going in and out of my kitchen as there’s always something going on there. Not that I’m a great cook, but that’s where I get to play with water and fire. I’m fascinated by the different steps of the cooking process, the transformation of raw food into delicious meals. Cutting, washing, peeling, mixing, steaming etc are fun to do when I take the time, and despite some disastrous failures, I’m always up for new tastes I’m unfamiliar with… [continued]
Ceramics by Jacques Lenoble stand atop a Eugène Printz cabinet at Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, Paris
When I was practising interior architecture, I was always more inspired by reinventing so-called functional spaces such as bathrooms and kitchens rather than decorating living rooms. Being a woman and a mother, realising the amazing amount of time spent navigating between the kitchen and bathroom, I always thought functional spaces should be the most luxurious and innovative places in the home. But, because designing kitchens or bathrooms can quickly become a technical headache, designers tend to use repetitive standard modular systems to avoid complications so the result can too often feel uninspiring. As such, when I moved into my apartment ten years ago, I banished from the kitchen as many electrical appliances as I reasonably could, discarding those standard elements I found ugly and sad. From the window, above the sink, I have an incredible view out over Beaubourg’s colourful rooftops, so washing up can seem like an exciting high-tech architectural experience!
What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year?
I recently spent a couple of days in Montpellier to visit the Valentine Schlegel exhibition at Musee Fabre where I found the delightful little book by Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, the author tells the story of his twelve days hiking alongside his stubborn donkey Modestine in the mountains where the protestant rebellion had struck almost two centuries before. It’s also a beautiful text telling us about travelling without any other goal than experiencing each moment.
What would you do if you didn’t work in art?
I’m the kind of person who gets stimulated by more than one topic at a time and there’s always a subject I’m curious about. That’s how I chose to study architecture as it bridges art with science, theory with construction, physics with aesthetics, history with utopia, urban planning with interior design and so on. All creative disciplines are exciting to me and I don’t think I could be happy if I didn’t have some project in the back of my mind.
What ambition do you still have?
Since I was a child, I dreamed about having my own shop to display both old and new innovative designs, a place where tradition and modernity could meet. And I find it refreshing to see that in recent years many small local concept stores have opened in Paris proposing crafted low-footprint alternative products — often inspired by all sorts of traditions.
What’s the greatest challenge of our time?
There are too many reasons to be scared of what might come ahead but educated optimism is the only reasonable choice. The real challenge to me is that a drastic reduction of our environmental footprint will only work if we also learn to share our limited and unlimited resources. It’s actually an exciting time for designers as new ways of life are urgently needed, although it’s much too big a task for them alone. As with the French Art Deco period, both architecture, design and production processes should move together if we want our lightweight shift to be global and not only reduced to isolated improvements.
When I was living in the UK in 2004, I trained at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. Interestingly, most of the techniques I learned about twenty years ago, such as green energies and conservation, natural and recycled materials, solar design issues etc — had been imagined and conceived fifty years back, and they are the same ones we’re still discussing today.
In fact, there’s little innovation to do to really make a change, but it might take another generation to shift our cultural, modernist, ethical, economic and aesthetic values. In fact, I feel an aesthetic change is already happening. While yesterday, slick design meant good design, today, people are seeking well-crafted, long-lasting and timeless organic materials like wood and stone. From the point of view of an Art Deco dealer, it’s an interesting evolution because our job is all about how time increases quality. It might also explain why so many young designers are so inspired by the period.
What’s next?
After an exciting year in 2022 dedicated to the fifty-year anniversary of the gallery, 2023 looks like a year full of surprises and unexpected possibilities. Next fall, the gallery will partner with Demisch Danant’s gallery in New York and we will swap our spaces between the two cities. A selection of their postwar French design collection will be exhibited at the gallery on Quai Malaquais in October during the Art Plus fair, while we will present our latest Ivanoff ceramic exhibition in their gallery on 12th Street in early November. I also recently decided to join the Fine Arts Biennale — an art fair which takes place at the end of November in the Grand Palais Éphémère. Finally, I’m working on an exhibition dedicated to lacquer work in home decoration, from its Art Deco renaissance till today, which lacquer jewellery artist Salomé Lippuner.