Armand-Albert Rateau | |
---|---|
Born | 24 February 1882 |
Died | 20 February 1938 55) | (aged
Nationality | French |
Occupation | furniture maker and interior designer |
Armand-Albert Rateau (born 24 February 1882 in Paris; died there 20 February 1938) was a French furniture maker and interior designer. In 2006, The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts characterized him as "the most eminent of the ensembliers, the high-style designer-decorators" who worked with luxury materials for the socially elite. [1] In 2012, Architectural Digest described him as "one of the most exclusive interior designers of the 1920s." [2] Two of his more notable achievements are the bronze furniture of his manufacture and the designs he assembled in decorating the apartment of Jeanne Lanvin. [1]
Rateau was born in 1882. [1] Trained at the École Boulle, Rateau took a formative trip with friends in 1914 to Naples and Pompei, visiting museums and archaeological sites. [3] When he began his career with renowned designer Georges Hoentschel, his focus was on Classical style. [4] At the age of 23, he became the artistic director of Alavoine and Company, which was one of the most important French companies in decoration at the time. In 1919, bolstered by the reputation he earned for his Classical work with Hoentschel and Alavoine, he set up his own house. [3]
Rateau's first important project was a commission from the United States, to furnish the swimming pool of George and Florence Meyer Blumenthal. [3] There, he began to work with the themes he had observed in his 1914 journey, creating the first bronze furniture pieces which would come to be so strongly associated with him. [1] [3] In 1920, he began working with French couturier Jeanne Lanvin, redesigning several of her properties, and soon thereafter began work designing for the Duchess of Alba. [3] He became one of the most important designers of the Art Deco furniture and decor movement in France, with an emphasis on Antiquity that also included a focus on Egyptian-based design. [1] [5]
Having become friends with Lanvin during his design work for her, he want on to manage her Lanvin-Sport business, also designing a bottle for her perfume line Arpège. [6]
The furniture that he designed in 1928 for Lanvin's apartment on rue Barbet-de-Jouy in Paris was donated by Prince Louis de Polignac to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1965. The entire apartment has been created and is on display there. [7]
Art Deco, short for the French Arts Décoratifs, and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s, and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look, Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings, ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners.
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Jugendstil was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German counterpart of Art Nouveau. The members of the movement were reacting against the historicism and neo-classicism of the official art and architecture academies. It took its name from the art journal Jugend, founded by the German artist Georg Hirth. It was especially active in the graphic arts and interior decoration.
Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, , was a French furniture designer and interior decorator, who was one of the most important figures in the Art Deco movement. His furniture featured sleek designs, expensive and exotic materials and extremely fine craftsmanship, and became a symbol of the luxury and modernity of Art Deco. It also produced a reaction from other designers and architects, such as Le Corbusier, who called for simpler, functional furniture.
Jeanne-Marie Lanvin was a French haute couture fashion designer. She founded the Lanvin fashion house and the beauty and perfume company Lanvin Parfums.
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Charles André Mare (1885–1932), or André-Charles Mare, was a French painter and textile designer, and co-founder of the Company of French Art in 1919. He was a designer of colorful textiles, and was one of the founders of the Art Deco movement.
Jean Dunand (1877–1942) was a Swiss and French painter, sculptor, metal craftsman and interior designer during the Art Deco period. He was particularly known for his lacquered screens and other art objects.
Henri Sauvage was a French architect and designer in the early 20th century. He was one of the most important architects in the French Art nouveau movement, Art Deco, and the beginning of architectural modernism. He was also a pioneer in the construction of public housing buildings in Paris. His major works include the art nouveau Villa Majorelle in Nancy, France and the art-deco building of the La Samaritaine department store in Paris.
Gilbert Rohde (1894–1944), whose career as a furniture and industrial designer helped to define American modernism during its first phase from the late 1920s to World War II, is best known today for inaugurating modern design at Herman Miller Inc.
Jeremiah Goodman was an illustrator who signed his work with his first name only. Goodman used his unique painting style to create the essence of a building's interior. His painting interprets the plans of both architects and interior designers. He painted original portraits of spaces for both commercial and private clients. For almost twenty years he created the covers for Interior Design magazine, and also books on interiors and for murals.
Suzanne Belperron (1900–1983), born in Saint-Claude, France, was an influential 20th-century jewellery designer based in Paris. She worked for the Boivin and Herz jewellery houses before the outbreak of World War II. Subsequently, she took over the Herz company, renaming it Herz-Belperron. Belperron had many important client, from royalty, arts and show business on both sides of the Atlantic.
René Fontayne, was a French painter and illustrator.
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Maurice Dufrêne (1876–1955) was a French decorative artist who headed the Maîtrise workshop of the Galeries Lafayette department store.
Paul Follot was a French designer of luxury furniture and decorative art objects before World War I. He was one of the leaders of the Art Deco movement, and had huge influence in France and elsewhere.After the war he became head of the Pomone decorative art workshop of Le Bon Marché department store, making affordable but still elegant and high-quality work.
Richard Hermann Antoine Bouwens van der Boijen was a French architect. In 1901, he was one of the winners of the Concours de façades de la ville de Paris for the realization of an Hôtel particulier, 8, rue de Lota in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. In the 1930s, he was an exponent of the Art Deco style; with French architect Roger-Henri Expert, Bouwens was given overall responsibility for the interior design of the SS Normandie.
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