Furniture and interiors

Art Deco furniture came mainly from France and Paris in particular; in the 1920s, almost nothing comparable in design and quality was produced outside France. American cabinetmakers were more inspired by German and Austrian modernists than by the examples from the Parisian salons. The roots of Art Deco furniture can be found in the French Ancien Regime and in the work of 18th century cabinetmakers such as Riesener, Roentgen and Weisweiler. This comparison was inspired by Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann and Jules Leleu himself, among others.

After the exuberant era of Art Nouveau, in which it was felt that furniture makers had strayed far from the tried and tested path of traditional French taste, there seemed to be a need for a return to purity of form and sophistication.

The design was simplified, carved details were reduced. Harmony was now seen in the appealing proportions of a chair leg or in the unobtrusive ivory decoration of the slats. The strict doctrine of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos at the beginning of the 20th century – that ornament was to be equated with crime – was prescient: but decoration was not completely abandoned after the excesses of the fin de siècle. It remained an integral part of Art Deco furniture. Beauty in the home, it was argued, was important for people’s well-being.

If one examines the pieces from the years between the wars, the designers of Art Deco furniture can be divided into three directions: Traditionalists, Individualists and Modernists.

The traditionalists took over the heritage of French cabinetmaking of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Jacques – Emile Ruhlmann was the most famous and influential designer among them. Although many of his well-known works were designed before 1920, his furniture is today regarded as the epitome of Art Deco at its finest, partly because of its impeccable forms and partly because of his careful combination of the most precious materials.

Ebony with its pitch-black surface, double-polished to bring out its typical coloring, was the designer’s favorite wood, and this led to a shortage in the industry in the 1920s.

Cabinetmakers had to resort either to ebony veneer or other woods. For Ruhlmann and others, the most popular substitute was Makassar – ebony from the Indonesian island of Celebes. Other important tropical wood veneers were Brazilian jacaranda (Rio rosewood), which was often used alternately with other veneers: amaranth, amboina, mahogany, rosewood and maple. They could also be used in combination with root wood such as maple or ash. The exotic species – palm wood, calamanda and zebra wood – had to be used sparingly if their very characteristic grain was not to overwhelm the observer.

The Art Deco furniture designer also liked to expand his repertoire with other materials, adding a touch of opulence to his works: in particular lacquer, galuchat (chagrin), ivory and wrought iron.

Of these, it was mainly lacquer that survived the 1920s, after which industrial synthetic lacquers increasingly came into use. Galuchat is the skin of a small spotted cartilaginous fish: skate leather. It could be used unbleached, varnished or dyed to emphasize its pithy surface texture. Snakes and animal skins, for example pony skin, were used in a similar way. Ivory, which was completely absent from furniture design in 1900, experienced a renaissance and was used to decorate and refine drawers, sabots, keyhole fittings and the slender outline of a curved furniture leg. Wrought iron was also used again, and its unruly mass became as pliable as wax when used for furniture, lighting fixtures and architectural elements.

The Süe et Mare partnership was institutionalized in the Compagnie des Art Français in 1919. Their furniture was inspired by the past, and they considered Louis Philippe’s style to be the last legitimate one. Mare declared in 1920: “He fulfilled needs that we still have. His forms are so rational that the carmaker who designs the interior of a car uses them unconsciously. We are not reviving it: we are not consciously continuing it, but we find it when we look for simple solutions, and in doing so we bind ourselves to the totality of our great past. We don’t just create fashionable art. ”

In the Süe et Mare armchairs, the upholstery was covered with Aubusson fabrics, decorated with tassels, creating a sumptuous and inviting effect. Other models could have been baroque or even rococo.

Leleu was an even greater traditionalist.

Characteristics. For him, his preference was for perfect cabinetmaking, harmony, as well as the use of the best available materials such as walnut, Macassar ebony, amboina and rosewood.

Margit, Ian, never dominant, were made of ivory, galuchat or horn.

Lacquer was introduced in the late twenties, as was brass and mother-of-pearl inlay work. This was followed by smoked glass panels and metal frames in the thirties, but the latter only to a limited extent, as Leleu found that

unlike wood, these did not improve with age.