ART + AUCTIONS
Inside the Biennale des Antiquaires’s Most Livable Booth AD decorative arts editor Mitchell Owens finds apartment inspiration in the antiques fair’s best-curated stall
TEXT BY MITCHELL OWENS
Posted September 17, 2016
Most art and design fairs simply present the goods as individual desirables. Every so often, though, a canny dealer—in this case, two dealers—creates a booth so meticulously planned, and with the offerings so thoroughly integrated, that one could imagine moving right in. For a shared display at the 28th Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris—which closes on September 18 at the Grand Palais—longtime friends Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz, the Paris- and Manhattan-based historicwallpaperhigh priestess, and Benoist Drut and Gerard Widdershoven of New York’s Art Deco emporium Maison Gerard conjured up something their fellow dealers did not: a sensationally seductive space tailor-made for living, a petit salon that one wanted to purchase outright and truck home, not leaving a single accessory behind.
Four large panels of Les Chasses de Compiègne, a rare early-19th-century scenic panoramic discovered by Thibaut-Pomerantz, are displayed on the booth’s tobacco-brown suede walls, resembling picture windows overlooking a wooded landscape where an aristocratic hunt is in progress. The honey-gold parquet de Versailles floor hosts some of Maison Gerard’s choicest offerings, including a sensuous 1920s Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann fauteuil and a low-slung circa-1960 James Mont sofa upholstered in creamy white. Discrete groups of vintage Line Vautrin mirrors (some from the collection of Bard Graduate Center founder Susan Weber spangle the walls like tarnished stars; a collection of Vautrin gold boxes shimmers on the circa-1938 T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings acacia-wood cocktail table; and rugged circa-1950 Claude Conover stoneware vessels are set atop lightly gilded, vaguely Asian pedestals.
Each object is eminently desirable, but the combined effect is an atmospheric masterwork—and a lesson in how two dealers can blend their utterly different wares in a way that maximizes not only the objects’ beauty but also their user-friendliness. Thibaut-Pomerantz and Maison Gerard’s treasures are as comfortably arranged as they would be in any expertly decorated salon. Theirs is a four-star environment ready for sitting, conversing, reading, writing a letter—or, as in my case, for a few glorious minutes, lounging against the sofa’s custom-made embroidered Miguel Cisterna cushions and sipping a flute of Ruinart Champagne as my fellow fairgoers wandered in and marveled at the sultry setting. Floral flourishes add to the intimate, at-home feeling, from the papery orange blooms known as Chinese lanterns (Physalis alkekengi, which spray out from a low glass vase on the cocktail table, to the feathery ornamental grasses that sprout from an Asian ceramic pot set on the parquet floor. Even though I bought not a thing—most fairs are too rich for my blood—I couldn’t wait to fly home and rely on Thibaut-Pomerantz, Drut, and Widdershoven’s collective vision to make my own living room a bit more welcoming. I’ve got a large Chinese porcelain pot; now all I have to do is track down the perfect fountain grass.