By Amélie Marcilhac, author of Marcel Coard Décorateur
After beginning his career with the great couturier and patron of Art Deco, Jacques Doucet, Marcel Coard’s career took a turning point in 1928 when he eventually asserted his own individual style through an entire commission to design Paul and Marcelle Cocteau’s country house in Touraine.
Paul Cocteau was Jean Cocteau's older brother and worked as stockbroker in Paris. In the mid-1920s, he turned to Marcel Coard for the design of a pair of parchment and grey velvet display cabinets to exhibit his collection of Roman sculpted marble heads, Egyptian vases and Japanese and Chinese miniatures. After his wedding to Marcelle Rageot, Paul Cocteau commissioned other pieces from the designer for the interior of their new Parisian home including an occasional table in Macassar ebony and mother-of-pearl, a parchment and malachite chest of drawers as well as a shagreen coffee table with a glass slab decorated with a fish, made together with the Hungarian sculptor József Csáky.
Thrilled with this collaboration and new friendship with Marcel Coard, the young couple gave carte blanche to Marcel Coard to carry out the interior decoration of their house in Champgault. On a plot of land near Tours, given to Marcelle as a gift for the birth for their daughter Nicole, the Cocteaus built an important country mansion with two master bedrooms, six guest bedrooms, two dining rooms as well as multiple living rooms and boudoirs. Marcel Coard conceived the entire project: he chose the furnishing fabrics; the floors finishes and wall coverings as well as the arrangement of furniture pieces and lighting that he created for them. The project was a total work of art which was completed by the end of 1930. The house was featured in an article published in September 1932 in Art & Décoration and in February 1935 in the periodical Art & Industrie.
The photographs in these two periodicals show a marked difference in the materials used in the works completed before 1929 and those that were finalised after that date, revealing the consequences of the Great Depression. The furniture in Paul and Marcelle Cocteau's bedrooms, for example, are delicately enhanced with Macassar ebony, mother-of-pearl and blue scagliola for her and brown leather and pine for him. Some of the guest rooms are decorated with straw marquetry furniture, the living rooms display shagreen-covered furnishings, or present entirely chisel-carved pieces and a yellow lacquered cabinet with maps of Champgault painted on it. These ensembles recall the first precious creations inspired by African arts and imagery which he designed for Jacques Doucet. In order to finish the house during the economic crisis and the financial difficulties of his patrons, Marcel Coard had to rely on local craftsmen near Tours and used more accessible materials paired with simpler and more economical techniques, adapted to the use of a country house. In the Champgault mansion, shagreen-covered pieces and lacquered furniture coexisted with simple painted wood tables without compromising the harmony of the interior.
Coard’s lighting, mostly created after 1929, appears only partially in the pictures from both periodicals. Fortunately, however, the Cocteau family archives show two ceiling lights created by the designer with similar features and construction to the present lot. These are important spheres, displaying planetary systems with a painted grey wrought iron structure, enclosing a globe in their centre and small glass spheres suspended from metal rods. The one illustrated in the periodicals also displays several glass stars. Their composition is nearly identical, and they both have painted illustrations of zodiac signs on the central painted band. Their structure comprises interlocking circles and a small star in the upper part, offset from the ceiling hook. Alongside the esoteric nature of these pieces, Marcel Coard's interest in the stars was most likely motivated by the discovery of the planet Pluto, ninth planet of the solar system on the 18 February 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.
The present ceiling light (Lot 29) is the only one of this kind known to exist, and the other two have never appeared on the art market. After Paul Cocteau's death in 1961, his widow sold part of the furniture from the house in 1970s to Parisian and foreign dealers such as Ileana Sonnabend as well as to Bob Walker, an important American collector. Walker was fond of Marcel Coard and persistently called him to acquire his designs. He eventually purchased Marcelle Cocteau’s entire bedroom as well as other precious pieces of furniture from Champgault, which he kept in this private collection for decades. Parisian art dealer Michel Souillac was amongst those who also acquired other furniture from the house, including the lacquered yellow wardrobe in the small living room and the present chandelier that he installed in the present owner’s townhouse in early 1980s.
As this ceiling light does not include the central bulb-covering globe like the ones in the two similar examples, one could suppose that this one was not installed in a room with such high ceilings as the one of the grand entrance hall but in a smaller room. The central band is painted on metal in shimmering colours with simplified illustrations of zodiac signs with applied gold leaf.
This extraordinary piece embodies Marcel Coard’s very own style of creating original and unique pieces for Paul and Marcelle Cocteau despite their diminishing means. With the use of new materials such as glass, mirrored glass or tubular metal, he achieved new forms, lighter and more subdued than those made for Jacques Doucet. Marcel Coard’s ceiling lights were singular creations not to be seen again in his later projects. He cared deeply about producing one of a kind or very limited pieces.
Provenance
Paul Cocteau, Champgault, commissioned directly from the designer Thence by descent Michel Souillac, Paris, acquired from the above Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 1981
Literature
Jean Gallotti, 'Marcel Coard', Art et Décoration, September 1932, p. 278 for a similar example 'Un Manoir Moderne chez M.P.C.', Art et Industrie, February 1935, p. 11 for a similar example Amélie Marcilhac, Marcel Coard Décorateur, Paris, 2012, pp. 26-27, 100 for a similar example
Like many other furniture designers of the Art Deco period, Marcel Coard began his career catering to the traditional tastes of his customers, only making unique and creative pieces for certain clients. His furniture design transcended the historicism and modernism that dominated the Art Deco style, and ultimately reflects the concepts and aesthetics of the early twentieth-century avant-garde as much as it does a particular decorating style.
Coard is most famous for the furniture he designed for the great couturier and patron of the arts Jacques Doucet. Widely published, Doucet's interior has come to define modern collecting practices and in particular was a formative inspiration for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Coard’s work was re-discovered in the historic 1972 auction of Doucet's collection, which achieved previously unrealized results in the still nascent Art Deco market.