Last week the upper echelons of France’s designers, collectors, advisors, and industry onlookers gathered inside the Grand Palais for La Biennale Paris, the highly focused but always opulent art and antiques fair.
It’s also the first year that the formerly biannual event went annual since its start in 1956, despite sticking with the world “biennale” in the name. If you’re accustomed to visiting other fairs that feel interminable, lifeless, and overcrowded, the Biennale is a tasteful antidote: natural light pours in from the Palais’s famed glass roof, and you’re never more than 100 steps from a shot of espresso.
And being an fair that’s typically overlooked in American collecting circles, it’s always refreshing to inspect the wares of highly specialized (and scrutinized) dealers selling everything from intricate nautical instruments to Louis XVI–era picture frames in pristine condition.
Next, the collecting world turns it attention to PAD London, which opens October 2 in Berkeley Square.
Courtesy Nirav Modi
Sakura Necklace amd Earrings by Nirav Modi
Fine jewelry and timepieces were on offer, including contemporary stunners by Nirav Modi. One of their latest creations was the Sakura necklace and earrings set. The pairing, inspired by the Japanese blossom, included more than 100 solitaire diamonds and nearly as many onlookers in its small booth near the fair’s center.
Courtesy Galerie Chevalier
“Man and the Sea” by Jean Picart Le Doux
Speaking of specialists, Paris’s Galerie Chevalier, which deals in rugs and tapestries, displayed a massive set of four 17th-century tapestries in one room—“The Hunts of Maximilian”—while in the other showed 20th century works that included a fantastical, 8-foot-high “Man and the Sea” by Jean Picart Le Doux.
Adrien Millot / Courtesy Galerie Yves Gastou
1970s Oak Chairs by Dominique Zimbacca
The fair is also a great place to find unloved or under-recognized greats of 20th century design. Galerie Yves Gastou, also from Paris, offered tables and chairs in oak from the ’70s by the late Dominique Zimbacca that were originally created for a home in the South of France. The pieces are architectural in style with sharp lines, but also look uniquely handmade (he was inspired his studies of Frank Lloyd Wright), illustrating that the “unlovable decade” of design wasn’t all that louche.
Courtesy Galerie Chastel-Marechal
Hermes Leather-Covered Desk by Paul Dupré-Lafon
At Galerie Chastel-Marechal, masterworks by another name that deserves to be rediscovered, Paul Dupré-Lafon, included a large, circa-1937 desk that was still covered in its original red Hermes leather.
Thierry Malty / Courtesy Galerie Dumonteil
“The Mortola Gardens” by Camille Roche
Also sourced—in this case, rescued—from the South of France was “The Mortola Gardens,” a series of nine oil paintings on wood panels by Camille Roche that were presented by Galerie Dumonteil. The works, depicting a colorful Mediterranean garden, were saved from destruction from a house in Juan-les-Pins (near Antibes), villa “Le Roc,” that was owned by the Lord and Lady Cholmondeley.
Franz Hagenauer / Courtesy Kunsthandel Kolhammer
Metal Busts by Franz Hagenauer
While French galleries dominated the scene, there were standouts from elsewhere including a jewel box of a booth from Vienna’s Kunsthandel Kolhammer. The outfit, specializing in works from the Wiener Werkstätte and the like, displayed rare curiosities such as a Josef Hoffmann gold-and-pearl ring, and metal busts from the early ’80s by the late artist Franz Hagenauer, whose workshop developed a unique, stylized vision for a better part of the 20th century.