{"id":319911,"date":"2018-09-13T19:59:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T23:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.com\/blogs\/the-study\/?p=319911"},"modified":"2021-12-15T07:10:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T12:10:01","slug":"henri-samuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.com\/blogs\/the-study\/henri-samuel\/","title":{"rendered":"Decorator to Know: Henri Samuel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The grand salon of G\u00e9rald and Florence Van der Kemp’s apartment in Versailles, which Samuel decorated around 1967. Photo courtesy of Henri Samuel: Master of the French Interior (Rizzoli)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When it came to decorating, Henri Samuel<\/a> (1904 \u201396) was a natural. As clich\u00e9 as it sounds, he had exquisite taste. Describing what made for his extraordinary discernment, what other decorators reverently described as the \u201cSamuel style,\u201d is difficult. No one was more challenged in accounting for it than Samuel himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He insisted that he tried not to repeat an interior’s style twice and always adjusted his decorative approach to the home and client. \u201cI could never explain to you why I do what I do, how I make decisions,\u201d the Frenchman told the Chicago Tribune<\/em> in 1986, shortly before he retired. \u201cIt\u2019s a gift.\u201d
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Samuel did think that whatever this gift was, it was born of both nature and nurture. He was the son of a banker, but the grandson of an antiquarian, and he grew up among people with beautiful things, which captivated him from an early age. After a two-year stint in the world of finance, apprenticed to a friend of his father\u2019s on Wall Street, he decided at age 21 to devote his life to decorating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His first job, in 1925, was at Jansen in Paris, arguably the most illustrious decorating firm in the world, with literally hundreds of artisans in its employ. There, he assisted the revered decorator St\u00e9phan Boudin. After nine years, Samuel went on to work at two other highly respected Parisian firms, Ramsay and Alavoine, bringing with him his devoted clientele, which included Rothschilds, Vanderbilts and Hearsts. \u201cEven while very young, I had important clients,\u201d he recalled in the Tribune <\/em>article. \u201cI felt established nearly from the beginning.\u201d
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In the late 1950s, Samuel embarked on another daunting endeavor: the renovation of the Chateau de Ferri\u00e8res, the imposing family seat of the Rothschild family, built in the mid-19th century. \u201cI really think he was the only choice for the task,\u201d Marie-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Rothschild later commented. \u201cHe\u2019s very, very good with everything to do with the 19th-century, which is of course what made him so ideal for Ferri\u00e8res. Everything was very well-executed and very refined. And I can tell you it\u2019s not easy to get the proportion and colors right in a place and scale of Ferri\u00e8res.\u201d
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In Samuel’s Paris drawing room, a brass cloud table by Guy de Rougemont<\/a> sits in front of the sofa opposite the Empire mantel with Strawberries<\/em> by Balthus hanging over it. Photo courtesy of Henri Samuel: Master of the French Interior<\/em> (Rizzoli)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t establish his own firm, however, until 1956, when he was 52 years old. The following year, he had the extraordinary honor of being selected by Gerald Van Der Kemp, the former Louvre curator in charge of restoring Versailles, with reconstructing its Empire rooms. Conferring this responsibility to someone who was not a curator caused quite a stir within the museum world. Yet there was no disputing Samuel\u2019s knowledge of the period, nor his ability to interpret it in way that was as charming as it was correct. His success with the assignment brought him two other museum commissions near the end of his career: conceiving room settings for the Wrightsman and Linsky collections of 17th- and 18th-century decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and a renovation of the 18th-century decorative arts galleries at the Mus\u00e9e de Camondo in Paris.
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Get the Henri Samuel Mix<\/div>\n\t\t\t
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