Jean Royère – Works & Design

Overview

Jean Royère (1902–1981) was a French decorator and designer who worked almost entirely on commission: complete interiors, furniture and lighting for private clients, hotels, embassies and palaces. He had no formal training. His wave-shaped metal tubing, plant and animal titles and bold colours set him apart from both the austere modernists and the period-style decorators of his time. His best-known pieces are the Ours Polaire sofa and the Liane wall lamp.

Le Havre and Paris, 1902–1942: A self-taught decorator
Royère was born in Paris in 1902. After classical schooling, law studies and a stay at Cambridge, he did his military service in 1925 and then worked in Le Havre for his uncle's import-export firm until 1931. Encouraged by Louis Metman, chief curator of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, he turned to decorating at 29 and learned the trade in a furniture workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. His first work was for his uncle. In 1932 he furnished the surgery and apartment of Dr Philippe Decourt in chromed tubing, and in 1933 the brasserie of the Hôtel Carlton on the Champs-Élysées brought his breakthrough.

In 1934 he joined Pierre Gouffé, a house better known for period reproductions, where a modern department was created for him. At the 1937 World's Fair he received seventeen commissions. At the 1939 Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, held together with the Salon de la Lumière, he showed a boudoir with the Champignon standing lamp, the Trèfle chair and the Éléphanteau armchair; critics called it "fairground Baroque". After the war years, during which he stayed with Gouffé, he opened his own agency at Rue d'Argenson in Paris in 1942.

Cairo, Beirut, Tehran, 1946–1963: Interiors abroad

From 1946 Royère turned to foreign markets: a gallery in Cairo (1946), an agency in Beirut with the architect Nadim Majdalani (1947), later branches and projects in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lima and São Paulo. His first public commission was the French consulate in Alexandria (1948). Other major jobs were the Hôtel Le Capitole in Beirut (1953) and, for the Iranian court from 1958, palace interiors and the Senate building in Tehran. In Paris he moved to a larger gallery at 182 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1949. He took part in the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs until 1959, retired in 1972, moved to the United States and died in Pennsylvania on 14 May 1981.

Design language

Royère used metal tubing in a custom diameter instead of the standard industrial one and bent it into undulating lines – a motif he called Ondulation and then developed into vines, clover leaves and branches. He treated the plant and animal world as a pretext, not as a model: the title of a piece names an idea (Hirondelle, "swallow", also alludes to the dovetail joint of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine workshops). Materials ranged from patinated, gilded or lacquered iron and brass to rattan, straw marquetry, dried flowers, opaline glass and faux fur. Colour was part of the concept: strong contrasts instead of the "good taste" beige of the 1950s.