Jacques Adnet Furniture
One of the most elegant and innovative 20th-century French furniture designers, Jacques Adnet created a simple, unadorned signature style that is both trim and vigorous. He began his career in the heyday of the Art Deco era, and in the 1950s, in association with Hermès, created chairs, lamps, desks and other pieces that employed slender metal frames clad in stitched saddle leather. With such furnishings, Adnet brought a fashion sensibility to design and decor that had not been seen since the 1920s prime of the great Paris couturier-decorator Paul Poiret.
Adnet was born in a provincial town in Burgundy, where he studied design before moving, along with his twin brother, Jean, to Paris to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs. After their graduation in the early 1920s, the brothers were hired to work in the decorative-arts atelier of the department store Galeries Lafayette, under the direction of Maurice Dufrêne, an Art Deco master who developed a singularly robust and opulent style. Both Adnets showed their work at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes — the design fair from which the term Art Deco is derived.
In 1928, Jacques Adnet took charge of the struggling La Compagnie des Arts Français, a decorative-arts firm founded by Louis Süe and André Mare that created modern furnishings that bore traces of 18th-century styling. Adnet immediately took the company in a different direction. He developed a simple lithe and lean look that incorporated industrial materials such as metal and glass, along with exotic woods and finishes such as parchment and sharkskin.
Adnet’s furniture begs to be described in terms of personalities: charming faux-bamboo side tables, suave chrome lighting and urbane club chairs. His most noted pieces, which feature sleek metal frames wrapped in Hermès leather, have a character all their own — smooth, elegant and self-assured, they inhabit a room with the same wit and grace as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve.
Find vintage Jacques Adnet furniture for sale on 1stDibs.
1850s French Antique Jacques Adnet Furniture
Ceramic, Leather
1940s French Mid-Century Modern Vintage Jacques Adnet Furniture
Brass
Late 20th Century American Chippendale Jacques Adnet Furniture
Brass
Mid-20th Century Mid-Century Modern Jacques Adnet Furniture
Brass
21st Century and Contemporary French Art Deco Jacques Adnet Furniture
Brass
20th Century Belgian Mid-Century Modern Jacques Adnet Furniture
Birch, Rosewood
1960s Vintage Jacques Adnet Furniture
Metal
1950s Swedish Mid-Century Modern Vintage Jacques Adnet Furniture
Teak
1950s European Vintage Jacques Adnet Furniture
Leather, Sycamore
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Jacques Adnet Furniture
Wood
20th Century American Federal Jacques Adnet Furniture
Burl
Late 20th Century Swedish Mid-Century Modern Jacques Adnet Furniture
Birch
20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Jacques Adnet Furniture
Walnut
Mid-19th Century French Mid-Century Modern Antique Jacques Adnet Furniture
Leather, Glass
1850s French Mid-Century Modern Antique Jacques Adnet Furniture
Brass
Mid-19th Century French Mid-Century Modern Antique Jacques Adnet Furniture
Steel, Brass
