Modern French Design and Contextual Decoration

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For more than half a millennium, France has been the world’s laboratory for Western style and design. Despite being home for designers like Philippe Starck and Ora Ito however, France hasn’t kept up with countries like Japan, Italy, and Sweden as a leader in furniture and product design. Deputy Trade Commissioner Elizabeth Puissant admits that “when one thinks of what’s new and what’s now, one does not necessarily think immediately of the French.” In an effort to expose French designers who “continue to evolve, create, and innovate,” the French Embassy Trade Office hosted Créativité: Made in France, a small showcase of French furniture designers, at the Les Migrateurs showroom in New York.

At first glance, the pieces seemed more Rococo than Moco. Geometric inlays, floral details, and a focus on craftsmanship all articulated France’s ornate design heritage. When I looked closer though, I found a consistently honest use of material, without sulfurousness finishing, and a nice melding of traditional detail with clean, modern construction and shapes. One of the strongest pieces of furniture (literally) was this brass and lava stone table designed by Joel Caturla and created by La Forge de Style for the Catherine Lagot showroom.

Ornamentation is definitely coming back, but furniture like this marble table by Taillardat is tricky- if you saw it in your grandma’s house, it would look like it belongs there. The seating, also by Taillardat, seemed to be even more informed by tradition. There seemed to be a spark of modernity hidden in each of these pieces though, whether in its proportions, colors, arrangement with other objects, like cushions. Again, because I was searching so hard, I could have been finding modernity where there was none. The build quality was gorgeous though, and if they were upholstered with more inspiring textiles, could have been a good taste of design’s near future.

From the Taillardat website:

Lighting:

These lamps were far more modern, and worked very well in the same room as the ornate chairs and tables. The Mercer Lamp at left, designed by Henry Personnaz, used two layers of shading; the bulb seemed to hang within a ghostly cylinder as it gave off soft, even light. The center Tribeca Lamp, also by Personnaz, was easily my favorite piece from the show, its shade made from thinly spaced pieces of aluminum that gave the uncanny impression of transparent brushed sheet metal. At right, the contrast between glass, concrete, and direct, unshielded light in the Alchemist Lamp by Nicholas Furrow add up to the perfect counterpoint to the plush, embellished furniture.

Donald Albrecht, a design curator and former architect, concluded the event with a lecture about cultural cross-pollination between Paris and New York. Between the two wars, he said, New York borrowed heavily from Paris’s style, while Paris borrowed skyscrapers and jazz from New York. His exhibition will start soon at the Museum of the City of New York.

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