The freeform shape of the Flaque table—French for puddle—illustrates the influence of biomorphism introduced by artists such as Hans Arp and Alexander Calder and situates Jean Royère’s design within a larger international discourse. From the 1930s, designers including Frederick Kiesler, Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, and Isamu Noguchi began exploring biomorphism in their work, departing from more traditional furniture forms. In the 1940s and 1950s, Royère would create several variations of the Flaque table, incorporating different materials and varied colors and ornamentation.
In 1947, for his own residence on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré in Paris, Royère designed his first pieces of biomorphic furniture, an Ours Polaire sofa and a Flaque low table similar to the present example. The latter featured an opaline glass top decorated with red stars and supported by three perforated sheet metal legs, positioned in the designer’s living room alongside a carpet whose fluid form echoed that of the low table. He even included the same model Ondulation table lamp as offered in this sale (lot 8 in the present sale). A few years later, Royère presented a version of the table with a blue opaline glass top as part of his design for an office lounge at the 1949 Salon des artistes décorateurs. These versions of Royère’s Flaque table from the 1940s illustrate the connection to the biomorphic forms developed by designers during the 1930s, such as the series of coffee tables designed by Gray with irregularly shaped wooden or metal tops on tubular steel frames. During the 1950s Royère developed his repertoire of freeform designs, substituting the use of metal with straw marquetry, thus enabling him to introduce new ornamentation into these works, characterized by supple lines and delicate star motifs.
Such works, as demonstrated by the present lot, feature pared-down forms given expression and defined within space through their materials, reflecting Royère’s captivation with fluid forms and his enduring independent expression.
Provenance
DeLorenzo 1950, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1990
Literature
"Sous les tropiques," Le Décor d’Aujourd’hui, October 1953, p. 124 Galerie Jacques Lacoste and Galerie Patrick Seguin, Jean Royère, Volume 1, Paris, 2012, pp. 240, 282, 299 Galerie Jacques Lacoste and Galerie Patrick Seguin, Jean Royère, Volume 2, Paris, 2012, pp. 6, 58 Pierre-Emmanuel Martin-Vivier, Jean Royère, Paris, 2017, p. 13
Jean Royère took on the mantle of the great artistes décorateurs of 1940s France and ran with it into the second half of the twentieth century. Often perceived as outside of the modernist trajectory ascribed to twentieth-century design, Royère was nonetheless informed by and enormously influential to his peers. Having opened a store in Paris in 1943 before the war had ended, he was one of the first to promote a new way of life through interior decoration, and his lively approach found an international audience early on in his career.
In addition to commissions in Europe and South America, Royère had a strong business in the Middle East where he famously designed homes for the Shah of Iran, King Farouk of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan. The surrealist humor and artist's thoughtful restraint that he brought to his furniture designs continue to draw admiration to this day.