Jacque-Emile Ruhlmann:
Master of his Art
A new exhibition on Art Deco opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Amongst the major designers featured is Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, perhaps the best known of Art Deco furniture designers.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum is staging one of the most ambitious exhibitions of Art Deco ever held from 27th March to 20th July next year. The exhibition features work from one of the 20th century's most outstanding furniture designers, Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, amongst others.

Background
In the 19th century the Arts and Crafts Movement concentrated on a return to good craftsmanship, plain design and high quality materials. Later, Art Nouveau introduced the concept that art was not confined to the fine arts but could also be applied to functional objects like furniture. After the First World War great social changes influenced the kinds of furniture required. There was also an emphasis, for those who could afford it, on well-designed decorative furniture which also included a high degree of functionality.

Amongst Art Deco designers there were two clear schools: the first was the direct inheritor of the two earlier movements. Designers like Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann concentrated on individual pieces made by highly skilled craftsmen for the extremely wealthy. On the other hand, some Art Deco designers sought to take advantage of mass production. These designers tended towards a severely geometric look which emphasised the functionality of the object.

Ruhlmann's Early Life and Influences
Ruhlmann was born in Paris in 1879. His father had a house painting business which he took over on his father's death in 1907. His venture into furniture design came in 1910 when he married and designed furniture for his first home. Initially, his furniture showed both strong Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts influences. Later, he came under the influence of designers from the Wienner Werkstatte who, by the outbreak of the First World War, were experimenting with more modernist forms and incorporating ancient Egyptian and Cubist influences into their work.

Then in 1919 he founded, with Pierre Laurent, the company Rulhmann et Laurent, specialising in interior design and producing luxury good of all kinds including furniture, wallpaper and lighting. By this time, Ruhlmann was making formal elegant furniture using precious and exotic woods in combination with ivory fittings, giving them a classic, timeless appeal.

Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes
At the same time that Ruhlmann was perfecting furniture making techniques, the French Société des Artistes Décorateurs, founded in 1900, was trying to encourage high standards of design and production in France through its annual exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne. The French government agreed to sponsor an international exhibition of decorative arts to be held in 1915 to further promote France's position in the field. Because of the First World War, this was postponed until 1925 and was called the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name. Held from April to October, it attracted more than six million visitors. Entry for exhibitors was by invitation only and all work had to be modern in design, not based on or derived from historic styles.

Art Deco Room
Thomas Mcknight
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Ruhlmann had several pavilions at the exhibition in which he used exotic work from other artists and designers to provide beautiful and opulent settings as showcases for his own furniture. For example, in his Pavilion d'un Collectionneur, an oil painting by Jean Dupas, Les Perruches, of heroic proportions depicting female nudes with parakeets, hung above the fireplace. The pavilion's exterior featured metalwork by Edgar Brandt and a panel by sculptor Joseph Besnard. The centrepiece of the pavilion was a grand piano designed by Ruhlmann and made from such exotic materials as amboyna wood and Macassar ebony. The V&A's exhibition will recreate this influential pavilion at the forthcoming Art Deco exhibition and will bring together a group of important works exhibited including Jean Dupas' famous painting.

Ruhlmann's Furniture
All Ruhlmann's furniture was handmade by specialist craftsmen. Right up until 1923 Ruhlmann was using outside cabinetmakers for his furniture. In that year he started his own cabinetmaking shop employing people highly skilled in carpentry, upholstery, mirror grinding, veneering and inlaying.

Even whilst the furniture was being made by other cabinetmaking businesses, his quality control was superb as the techniques used produced pieces so flawless that Ruhlmann's furniture has been favourably compared to the finest 18th century pieces. Ruhlmann refused to admit that something could not be done. He wanted his designs executed, no matter how difficult. His craftsmen were expected to keep trying until they achieved his vision. For all its elegance, the furniture was designed to be used and to be comfortable. Form and design served to enhance the use of the furniture.

The company never catered for the mass market. One of his pavilions at the 1925 exhibition might have been called ‘Pavilion for a Collector' but rich collectors were the ones that he had in mind. He believed that fashion started amongst the rich elite because they were the ones who could afford the costs of experimentation. He further believed that the whole purpose of fashion was for the display of wealth. In fact Ruhlmann claimed that, in spite of the high prices he charged, he lost money on each piece of furniture because of the expensive materials used and the amount of time and effort that went into each piece. He could only continue to make his superb pieces because he had another business that made a profit.

In 1933 Ruhlmann discovered that he was terminally ill. To protect the reputation he had built for his furniture he said in his will that the company was to finish any outstanding orders and then the company was to be dissolved.

Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann's reputation as the supreme furniture designer of the 20th century has survived intact. His furniture may be seen in the permanent collections of, amongst others, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as in the Victoria and Albert Museum's forthcoming exhibition.

Copyright © Carol Fisher 2003. All Rights Reserved

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