Design Now

Call it Design, Design Art, Interior Design or the Decorative Arts—this autumn, Paris is celebrating the French art of living well with a raft of new events and openings. Hard on the heels of the marathon Maison&Objet professional trade fair that continues to draw record numbers of visitors, the inaugural Paris Design Week (Sept 12–18) will offer almost a hundred exhibitions, installations, round table discussions and atelier visits all over town. Galeries Lafayette is devoting eleven display windows of its Lafayette Maison store to the latest trends in lighting, tableware, furniture, kitchenware, furnishing fabrics and decorative objects, with everything on sale inside. The French have finally caught up with recycling, exemplified by the Breton group Dsàt’s oversize Maxi-chair, a limited edition collaboration between designer Anouchka Potdevin and upholsterer Mickaël Laurent made from recuperated kitchen chairs and offered in a choice of materials.

Galerie VIA also accents crafts/design duos in a selection of furniture and lighting,  while the Centre Pompidou boutique will unveil avant-garde mirrors by Constance Guisset and Ionna Vautrin and chairs by Jerszy Seymour and Ron Arad. The Galerie Gosserez’s “Pygmalion” show spotlights up-and-coming designers Piergil Fourquié, Julie Pfigersdorffer, Thibaud Klepper and Alfredo da Silva, and the Hip Galerie d’Art gives a one-man exhibition to Czech glass wizard Borek Sipek.

For sustenance, there are Champagne tastings at wine emporium Lavinia and a Design Week special, the “brioche duo” with a double filling of yuzu cream and strawberry sauce at Pâtisserie des Rêves. At chic concept shop Colette, the Design Week scoop is a collection of hand-blown crystal glasses designed by Karl Lagerfeld for the Swedish firm Orrefors. His Champagne coupes and flutes, wine, water and liqueur glasses have pure geometric shapes that come in clear, black or milky white glass (“like a free-standing geometrical cloud” says the creator). Some versions have engraved monograms, like the crystal coasters he’s added as an extra refinement. In an online video clip, Kaiser Karl proclaims himself pleased, noting that the quality of crystal makes a difference to your drinking pleasure, whether your tipple is Champagne or, like his, Diet Coke. “Believe me, it tastes better,” he affirms, as he sips from his milky white Orrefors goblet (www.orrefors.com).

From Sept 12–22, Intérieurs 2011: L’Art de Vivre avec l’Art, a show at the Artcurial gallery sponsored by French Architectural Digest and featuring the work of some of France’s most prominent decorators, provides an aperçu of what is behind the closed doors of their haute clientele. Highlights include François-Joseph Graf’s decor of lacquers and dark precious woods with gold accents in a Japanese spirit. India Mahdavi was inspired by the paintings of Mark Rothko for her patchwork walls and curtains in colorful wool, cotton and silk. Chahan Minassian created a sculptural salon of antique boiseries with a mirrored floor to set off a striking dining table tableau, while Pierre Yovanovitch has imagined a luxurious cocoon in which to watch video art. 7 Rond Point des Champs-Elysées, 8th. website

In 2006, young French art entrepreneurs Julien Lombrail and Loic Le Gaillard moved to London to open their cutting-edge design/art Carpenters Workshop Gallery. Collaborating with designers doing art and artists doing design, they produced “manifesto-objects” to great success. With London locations in both Chelsea and Mayfair, they’re now setting up back in their hometown. CWG’s Paris gallery, on the edge of the Marais, opens Sept 22, displaying the “functional sculptural pieces” of their regular stars. Standouts include Atelier Van Lieshout’s Infrastructure dining table of forged steel and glass, Sebastian Brajkovic’s asymmetric bronze and silk-embroidered Lathe V chair and Studio Job’s contemprary take on a stained glass window in polychrome handblown glass, lead and Indian rosewood. “Once, every artist wanted to be in Paris,” Lombrail explains. “Then they disappeared. Now we feel Paris is coming back on the map. There is new, real excitement for contemporary art.” 54 rue de la Verrerie, 4th. website

Meanwhile Paris design/art stalwart Kreo is flying high this fall with two of its stars being given museum solo shows: Martin Szekely at the Centre Pompidou and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec at the Pompidou Metz. At the gallery, from Sept 8–Oct 7, Pierre Charpin’s eight deceptively simple, ultra-smooth pieces including a bench, desk, console, coffee table and lamp are the result of his experments in Krion®, a new, solid, porcelain-like material that is difficult to manipulate but super-resistant to water, chemicals, stains, heat, bacteria and sunlight. 31 rue Dauphine, 6th. website

Since ancient Egypt, gold has been a mythic feature of haute decorative art—and at the moment it’s once again an inventor’s refuge. The Galerie En Attendant Les Barbares has given eight designers carte blanche to imagine new-look gilded or gold-accented furniture and accessories in an exhibition called Or(s), Oct 6–Dec 15. Jean-Philippe Gleizes’s surprising new chair, entirely covered in yellow-gold leaf, resembles a medieval knight’s helmet. Elizabeth Garouste’s surreal “eye” mirror is framed in gilded wood, with a gold pupil slightly off-center. Christian Ghion’s captivating white-gold-leafed gueridon has an apple-shaped base, while Eric Jourdan’s abstract, rectangular gueridon is made of thin, folded steel panels partly covered in white gold leaf. Eric Robin’s whimsical sculpted iron standing lamp has birdlike feet in black and an integrated gold-leafed tray. By special permission of the former design duo Garouste and Bonetti, who no longer work as a team, the show also includes their never-before-produced 1998 mahogany desk with black wrought-iron and white gold accents. “Like the image of haute couture, I wanted the Or(s) exhibition to express a certain quest for perfection and rarity,” says gallery owner Agnès Standish-Kentish. 35 rue de Grenelle, 7th. website

Christian Ghion has also been busy in the Bois de Boulogne, revamping the glass-walled Grand Pavillon of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, an upmarket children’s playground, into La Grande Verrière restaurant. Offering both adult and kid-friendly menus overseen by three-star chef Christian Le Squer, the airy, vaulted 5,000-sq-ft room has attractive white Corian tables (a contemporary nod to the white table linens of yore) and pale green vegetal pillars in expandable “millefeuille” layers that allow different configurations. The large outdoor terrace is a perfect place to bask in an Indian summer sun. Jardin d’Acclimatation, Bois de Boulogne, 16th. Métro: Sablons. 01.45.02.09.32

Originally published in the September 2011 issue of France Today