Thursday, October 28, 2010

Dealer Spotlight: Maison Gerard


EEE:  One can’t help but notice all these wonderful pieces of lacquer.  How did you find all of these pieces?

Benoist Drut of Maison Gerard: Every year we try to design a room around some kind of a theme.  And thanks to these three pieces - a pair of cabinets by Jansen, and the black lacquer cabinet by Ramsay - we thought it would be a nice mix to play with. 

A limited edition macassar ebony and red lacquer bookcase by Jean Berenger de Nattes
We also wanted to showcase the work of Jean Berenger de Nattes who is a contemporary French designer.  This bookshelf is a limited edition of eight.  It’s extremely well done -  the base is bronze gilt with 24 karat gold but done in both matte and shiny finishes.  The inside is red lacquer, so we thought we had a theme.

One of a pair of cabinets by Jansen

When you think of the first use of lacquer in the decorative arts, you think of chinoiserie and Japanese or Chinese screens.  These pieces don’t really reference that.

The tortoiseshell lacquer center table by Jansen could probably qualify to be a direct heir to the eighteenth century, but it’s true that the three cabinets are very different.  One reason is that the lacquer is Bakelite lacquer.  Shortly after the second World War, a company created a new process using Bakelite which was the first non-natural lacquer.  It was a lacquer that was far more durable, easier to use, and which also allowed you to play with many more colors than natural lacquer would have.  Leleu and other designers at that time only used this when it came to their lacquer. 

Installing your stand as a room must give clients an idea of how it might look in their own residence. 

Exactly.


And even though there is a bed in the middle of the floor, it doesn’t necessarily look like a bedroom.  This could be a salon, this could be any room…

That’s the way we envisioned it.  We are lucky enough to have a large booth with a 12’ high ceiling and every year we do try to come up with something current as if you were stepping into an apartment.  It’s one thing to sell furniture, it’s another thing to show people how they may want to live with it.  And we also belong to the school that less is more and there is no need to plaster everything all over and show as much as possible.  To me, this is the opportunity to select a few things, to showcase them  - and we please ourselves as well!  It’s nice to sit in this room and not have it look like a store and believe that you really could live here. 

I love the floor…

This was Christopher’s find and fight!  It’s parquet de Versailles but it’s made of reclaimed wood so it’s totally green - the same way antiques are green, because basically you are reusing something which has already been created so you don’t need to cut more wood or melt more iron.  The parquet just fit in well with everything else.

It does.  It’s elegant and a nod to historicism – yet it’s unfinished, left in its natural state -  so it’s a wonderful combination of contemporary and traditional.  And lacquer seems to me to be very much like that.  There is a timelessness to it.  It’s never gone out of fashion.

To go back to your point about the 18th century and modernity, when you look at those cabinets, they are all very much neoclassical in their shape and it almost could be 18th century in a way – and yet it’s not.  It’s not, because the proportions are slightly accentuated and their height is too tall or not tall enough compared to 18th centure pieces. So they have the flair of the 18th century but are clearly of the 1940s.

Tell me about the lantern.
It’s a contemporary work by French designer Herve van der Straetten.  Herve is a very talented designer. He started designing jewelery many many years ago and right away went into furniture.  It’s an old design of his – it’s a reference to Ancient Greece, but also to an Andre Arbus design of the 1940s.   

Here again it’s the bringing together of neoclassicism and the influence of the 40s into a contemporary way of life and setting.

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