Paul Follot

Paul Follot (1877–1941) – Parisian master ensemblier and pioneer of Art Déco

Life and background

Paul Follot was born on 17 July 1877 in Paris and died in 1941 in Sainte-Maxime in the Département Var on the French Riviera. He came from a Parisian family of craftsmen and entrepreneurs: his father Félix Follot owned the renowned Parisian wallpaper manufacture Société Charles Follot, one of the most famous addresses for high-quality wall coverings of the Belle Époque. From this milieu Paul Follot turned to the decorative arts at an early age, trained first as a sculptor and then studied under the Swiss artist and graphic designer Eugène Grasset, a central figure of French Art Nouveau and of the Parisian training of decorative artists. Under Grasset, Follot laid the foundations for his consistently flat, graphically clear approach to form.

Early career and milieu

Between 1901 and 1903 Follot worked for La Maison Moderne, the gallery and manufacture founded in Paris by the art critic and dealer Julius Meier-Graefe. There he designed silver objects, bronzes, jewellery and textiles in the Art Nouveau style. He shared this environment with the designer Maurice Dufrêne, who influenced him strongly. In 1901 Follot was one of the founding members of the influential Société des Artistes Décorateurs (SAD), which emerged in response to the growing wish for a distinctly French answer to the German and Austrian reform movements. In 1903 he was also a founding member of the artist group “L’Art dans Tout” (“Art in Everything”), which defended French craftsmanship against industrial mass production.
Independent practice from 1904/1910
From 1904 Follot worked as an independent designer. Around 1910 he established his own decoration and interiors house in Paris, supplying a wealthy, cultured clientele with fully designed interiors. His reputation quickly rested on high craftsmanship, noble materials and a restrained, classically grounded luxury. During this period Follot designed not only furniture but also textiles for the manufacture Cornille et Cie, carpets for the royal Manufacture de la Savonnerie and silver for the Parisian house Christofle. In 1911 he supplied porcelain designs for the English manufacturer Wedgwood – an early sign of his international reach. Between 1910 and 1914 he also designed novel forms of jewellery; in 1913 he designed a furniture ensemble for the soprano Germaine Lubin in which the cornucopia was the leitmotif – a symbol that would recur through his late work.

Role in the emergence of Art Déco

The dining-room ensemble in sycamore, ebony and amaranth that Follot presented at the 1912 Paris Salon d’Automne is today regarded as one of the first fully realised examples of what would become Art Déco. The chair backs displayed openwork baskets of fruit and flowers – a motif that impressively marks the transition from the tangled vegetal Art Nouveau to the calmer, more geometric and classically framed ornament of the 1920s. The art historian Gregory Cerio counts Follot among the “purists” of early Art Déco: a circle who saw the new modernism not as a rupture but as a continuation of French classical furniture-making of the 18th and early 19th centuries (Louis XVI, Empire). Follot himself, in 1928, formulated the widely quoted sentence: “We know that the ‘necessary’ alone does not suffice for man and that the superfluous is indispensable to him – or we would also have to abolish music, flowers, perfumes and the smiles of ladies.”

Pomone – artistic direction of Le Bon Marché’s workshop (from 1923)

After the First World War Paris saw the rise of the grands magasins movement: the great department stores set up their own art workshops (ateliers d’art) in order to offer affordable yet high-quality furniture and interior fittings. In 1923 Paul Follot took over the artistic direction of Pomone, the new workshop of the traditional department store Le Bon Marché. He designed the workshop’s emblem – a tree heavy with fruit – as a visual translation of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees. Under Follot’s direction Pomone developed a distinctive, soft, floral-fruity Art Déco style that combined the tradition of French cabinet-making with a new, contemporary formal language.

Pavillon Pomone – 1925 Paris International Exposition

At the famous “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” in Paris in 1925 – the exhibition that retrospectively gave the style its name – Paul Follot designed all the rooms of the Pavillon Pomone, whose architecture was by Louis-Hippolyte Boileau. He also designed an antechamber for the model pavilion “Une Ambassade française”. The Pavillon Pomone was among the most acclaimed contributions to the exhibition and definitively established Follot’s international reputation. Contemporary critics praised in particular the calm, “non-violent” atmosphere of his interiors; Gabriel Mourey wrote in 1929 in Art et Décoration: “One breathes there a comfortable and precious atmosphere, sheltered from the noise, agitation and tumult of the outside world. No violence, no brutality.”

Waring & Gillow Paris (from 1928) and the collaboration with Serge Chermayeff

From 1928 Paul Follot took over, alongside his own projects, the artistic direction of the Paris branch of the English furniture house Waring & Gillow together with the Russian-British designer Serge Chermayeff. Together they sought to give the traditional company a progressive, modern Art Déco identity; Follot brought his characteristic motifs – fruits, garlands and cornucopias – into the programme. The visible high point of this collaboration was the 1928 exhibition “Modern Art in French and English Decoration and Furniture” in Waring & Gillow’s Oxford Street showrooms in London: 68 fully furnished model rooms on two floors, open from November 1928 to January 1929. In 1931 Follot resumed his fully independent practice as an ensemblier.
SS Normandie and the 1935 Brussels International Exposition
In 1935 Paul Follot was commissioned to design several rooms of the legendary French ocean liner SS Normandie – the floating icon of Art Déco for which other leading ensembliers such as Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Jean Dupas and René Lalique also worked. In the same year he presented interiors at the 1935 Brussels International Exposition, one of the last great international stages of classic Art Déco.

Style, materials and motifs

Paul Follot’s earlier furniture still reflects the aftermath of Neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau design; from Grasset he had inherited a strong interest in figurative, sculpturally carved wood motifs. Characteristic motifs are stylised baskets full of fruit and blossoms, often executed in solid wood by the sculptor Laurent Malclès. Follot worked with soft, gently curved and richly decorated gilt-wood frames, fine upholstery and inlays in contrasting veneers; fire-gilt bronze friezes are also typical. From 1910 onwards his formal language became calmer, more geometric and more classical, drawing on Louis XVI and Empire references. His preferred materials were sycamore, ebony, amaranth, rosewood, mother-of-pearl, ivory substitutes, patinated silver and gilded bronze.

Textiles, wallpapers, silver, jewellery and porcelain

Follot was a universally active ensemblier: he designed wallpapers (among others for the family firm Charles Follot), textiles for Cornille et Cie, carpets for the Manufacture de la Savonnerie, silver objects for Christofle and porcelain designs for Wedgwood in England (from 1911). His jewellery of 1910–1914 is regarded as a bridge between Art Nouveau and Art Déco. He was also active as an author, in particular with “Documents de bijouterie et orfèvrerie modernes” (Henri Laurens, 1900) and “Intérieurs français au Salon des Artistes Décorateurs” (C. Moreau, 1927).
Significance
Paul Follot is regarded today as one of the most important pioneers and classics of French Art Déco. Together with Maurice Dufrêne, André Groult, Süe et Mare and Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann he represents the generation that shaped the decorative arts of France between 1910 and 1935 into an internationally radiating Gesamtkunstwerk. His work combines the craft culture of the 18th century, the reformist stance of Art Nouveau and the classicist-modern ideals of Art Déco. As head of the Pomone workshop at Le Bon Marché he also brought a demanding decorative modernism into bourgeois everyday life, decisively shaping the visual identity of Parisian interiors of the 1920s.