A new book celebrates the 1925 Paris Exposition, a landmark event that shaped twentieth-century design and gave its name to Art Deco
Renowned as the preeminent exponent of French Art Deco, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879–1933) was recognised for the aesthetic refinement, luxurious materials, and impeccable craftsmanship of his creations. Inspired by eighteenth-century pleasure pavilions, Ruhlmann’s pavilion, L’Hôtel du Collectionneur (The Town House of the Collector), was one of the most admired exhibits at the fair. Conceived as a modern-day Trianon, it was filled with his own sumptuous furnishings together with a meticulous selection of objets d’art.
The Collector’s House, 1925
The purported occupant of Ruhlmann’s pavilion was an idealised collector – precisely the sort of person the exhibition was engineered to attract. That such a collector would be rich was a given, since the primary focus of the fair generally, and of Ruhlmann’s pavilion specifically, was expensive luxury goods. But Ruhlmann himself also must be recognised as embodying this collector, since it was he who defined the pavilion’s look and feel.
The richness of the pavilion’s interior contrasted with the sobriety of its exterior. It represented Ruhlmann’s skill as an ensemblier, his ability to provide every aspect of an interior from architectural details and furniture to textiles, lighting, paintings, sculpture, and objets d’art. While the undisputed centrepiece was the domed salon, each room was treated with the same degree of attention.
Ruhlmann’s furnishings were sumptuous and, like the building’s architecture, made a deliberate link with the past, both stylistically and intellectually. In the grand salon, a suite of seating furniture covered in tapestry and a monumental chandelier made from cascades of brilliant crystal prisms (hanging beneath a ceiling painted by Louis Pierre Rigal) recalled the grandeur and formality of the Empire and Louis Philippe periods. Throughout the pavilion, costly materials were used: precious wood veneers and lacquer for furniture, silk damasks and velvets for upholstery, furs for coverlets and throws.
While Ruhlmann designed the majority of the pavilion’s furnishings, in the spirit of his “collector” he also mixed in carefully selected works by respected contemporaries. Noteworthy were Edgar Brandt (ironwork), Émile Decœur (ceramics), François-Émile Décorchemont (glass), Jean Dunand (lacquer and metalwork), Léon-Albert Jallot (furniture), Francis Jourdain (outdoor furnishings), Pierre Legrain (bookbindings), Émile Lenoble (ceramics), Claudius Linossier (enamels), Jean Mayodon (ceramics), Jean Puiforcat (silver), and Henri Rapin (furniture). The inclusion of such pieces was determined by necessity as much as taste, to fully furnish the pavilion in time for the Exposition’s opening.
Although Ruhlmann had earned a lofty and widespread reputation long before the Exposition, he used his pavilion as an opportunity to burnish it in dazzling physical terms. Gilding the lily, he crowned the building with signs in small lights: RUHLMANN atop both the main entrance and garden façade, and COLLECTIONNEUR along its Esplanade roofline.
Like all the pavilions, the Hôtel du Collectionneur was torn down after the fair closed. It existed for only six months, although furnishings from it survive in museums including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Casa de Serralves in Porto, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – as well as in private collections around the world.
Its most lasting record exists in L’Hôtel du Collectionneur, the commemorative book published in 1926 by Éditions Albert Lévy. But even only as a memory, Ruhlmann’s pavilion represents perhaps the most complete and elegant expression of Art Deco taste, one of the significant aesthetic achievements of its age.
The Birth of Art Deco: Ruhlmann and the Hôtel du Collectionneur, 1925 by Jared Goss, published by Rizzoli.
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