Centurion Australia Winter 2014

art & design Classic

art & design Classic craft Wonders of wood Indubitably opulent and unsurpassed in splendour, carved wood panels are back in vogue, thanks to Guillaume Féau. We meet the man known as the king of his chosen craft – boiserie. By Jeffrey T Iverson Remarkable 17th-century decor in the dining room of a circa 1920 residence on Cap Ferrat, the result of four years of work by Féau At a time when the design world seems to celebrate above all the minimalist and streamlined, one might imagine that decorative boiserie (the French term for carved wood panelling) would have been dismissed as overwrought and antiquated. And yet today, gilded, elaborate woodwork worthy of Louis XVI or Napoleon is appearing on walls in Park Avenue townhouses, Hyde Park apartments, Moscow palaces and Australian mansions. And to visit the showroom of Féau & Cie – located on an inconspicuous 17th-district Paris side street – it rapidly becomes evident why the Frenchman Guillaume Féau has emerged as perhaps the world’s leading specialist in antique wood decors. Féau & Cie has been designing interiors since 1875. Today, their labyrinthine, 1,000sq m warehouse showroom offers a walk through the history of French interior design since the 17th century, across works by its greatest architects, from Baroque master Jules Hardouin-Mansart to Neoclassical innovators Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and François-Joseph Bélanger, Empire style founders Percier & Fontaine and Art Deco luminary Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann. Féau’s collection boasts more than 200 complete interiors, thousands of other pieces of boiserie – panels, friezes, cornices and other ornamentation – and plaster casts of hundreds more. The collection is museum quality (and indeed both the Louvre and the Met have acquired works here) but this is not a museum. Féau doesn’t hoard priceless boiserie so it may gather dust – his passion is to see it live again. In the 18th and 19th centuries – boiserie’s golden age – the status and wealth of the highest echelons of power was literally written on the walls of their homes. When Féau was growing up in the 1970s, though, naked, white walls had become the vogue. And yet during Féau’s childhood, his father’s boiserie warehouse was his playground, and his picture books were plans of famous 48 CENTURION-Magazine.com

we’ve been successful in showing that classical decors can CReate something very contemporary Above: white and gold panelling, made partially from 18th-century panels and a gilded bronze fireplace from a Côte d’Azur property; below left: a museum-quality boudoir, also from Cap Ferrat below right: detail from an 18th-century door, believed to be by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux Photos © Féau & Cie rooms like Ledoux’s “Four Continents” (a sumptuous boiserie of exquisitely carved animals – horse, elephant, camel and alligator – today owned by Féau). Attending business school as a young man, his final thesis was a plan to focus Féau & Cie’s activity on selling and creating replicas of antique woodwork. His vision would transform the company. At the very time Féau was taking the reigns of the family business in the 1990s, a new generation of decorators, including Alberto Pinto and Jacques Garcia, were bringing grand classical decors back into fashion. With an already vast collection of boiserie – which has only grown, bolstered in part with inventories of eclipsed competitors – and armed with new techniques for moulding and re-creating antique woodwork in great detail using resin, Féau was positioned to respond to the growing demand. Today, 80% of Féau’s business is creating and installing replicas of grand classical decors. With 40 building projects currently underway throughout the world, Féau and his team of designers and artisans create around 80 original decors every year, assembling decorative elements from their collection to effectively create “new” Ledoux, Bélanger or Percier & Fontaine rooms. His portfolio includes interiors in several apartments at New York’s 740 Park Avenue, in Josef Hoffmann’s Villa Primavesi in Vienna and in the Villa Fiorentina on Cap Ferrat, considered one of the most beautiful houses in the world. Féau’s success confirms his belief that great design doesn’t date. “Today, the 18th century is not necessarily à la mode, but we’ve been successful in showing that classical decors, reused in nontraditional ways, can create something very contemporary,” says Féau. “A handsome Louis XVI decor painted white with an aluminium floor and very contemporary furnishings (chairs by Ron Arad or Jean Prouvé?) and artwork (a painting by Warhol or Hirst? A sculpture by Dubuffet or Léger?) is very beautiful, and many decorators and architects have now understood that today.” And because of that, Féau & Cie is breathing new life into a 400-year-old tradition, and providing the remaining artisans versed in its secrets an outlet for their considerable talent. “Behind this are so many professions and production techniques of great complexity,” says Féau. “We are lucky to have been able to preserve this savoir-faire ... for us, that is so important.” feauboiserie.com CENTURION-Magazine.com 49