Jacques Adnet Secretaires
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.
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Early 20th Century French Art Deco Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Leather, Ash
1930s French Art Deco Vintage Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Walnut
1930s Art Deco Vintage Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Bronze
21st Century and Contemporary Philippine Art Deco Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Shagreen Stingray, Palmwood
Late 18th Century Swedish Gustavian Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Metal, Brass
1930s Swedish Art Deco Vintage Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Mahogany
Early 20th Century French Art Deco Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Metal
18th Century German Louis XVI Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Spruce, Walnut
19th Century English Chinoiserie Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Brass
Mid-19th Century French Louis Philippe Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Leather, Fruitwood
Early 18th Century French Louis XV Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Walnut, Pine
Late 18th Century Swedish Gustavian Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Metal, Bronze
1780s French Louis XVI Antique Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Kingwood
Mid-20th Century French Mid-Century Modern Jacques Adnet Secretaires
Brass
