An eclectic creator, brilliant and erudite, Pierre Legrain (1889–1929) first made his mark with his pen (sharpened at the Germain Pilon school from 1901 to 1907, where he met Robert Delaunay, among others), and with his sense of graphic design, talents that earned him the opportunity to work on drawings in collaboration with Paul Iribe, founder of the satirical newspaper Témoin. Pierre Legrain subsequently developed a skill that opened him up to binding or framing, and then to design, architecture, and decoration with the conception of objects and art furniture, during a period marked by the codes of Art Deco.
A blazing career.
He began his apprenticeship in bookbinding autodidactically when Jacques Doucet, a couturier and great art collector, took the young artist under his wing as an employee and taught him the techniques of bookbinding. He entrusts the task of assembling his collection of books. Pierre Legrain then sets up his workshop in the patron’s apartments. From 1917 to 1919, he imposes a unique and original style, using noble materials, developing lines and graphics that break with tradition. His talent is soon recognized; his recognition in this field earns him work for major collectors and the Blumenthal Prize in 1925.
Pierre Legrain is also distinguished by the way he renews the framing of paintings, in a style that takes up his approach of binding them. In 1924, Jacques Doucet, on the advice of André Breton, acquired Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) for the sum of 25,000 Francs and entrusted Pierre Legrain with the task of framing the work, which is now in the collections of the MOMA in New York. Indeed, after Jacques Doucet’s death in 1929, his widow sold the painting to Jacques Seligmann, shortly before the end of the universal exhibition in 1937 when it was presented, for 150,000 Francs. Jacques Seligmann exported the painting to his gallery Seligmann & Co in New York and it was Alfred Barr, the first director of the MOMA, who acquired it then in 1939 for the benefit of the museum, for 200,000 Francs.
Jacques Doucet wishes to harmonize the decoration of his apartment with his art collections, and this is how the collaboration with Pierre Legrain leads to the creation of exceptional furniture that blends influences from Cubism and African art, particularly favored by the couturier. Jacques Doucet’s apartment is conceived as a veritable mise en scène, a decor that itself serves as a work of art. In this period at the beginning of the 20th century, Pierre Legrain met Jeanne Tachard, a friend of Jacques Doucet, whose African art collection inspired the creator. Following Jacques Doucet, she would turn to Pierre Legrain to completely redesign his villa in a manner that was also a work of total art: spaces, furniture, objects, lighting, and garden that would become emblematic.
Apartment of Jacques Doucet in 1925, furnished by Pierre Legrain.
An influence of the early arts.
Other personalities will also entrust Pierre Legrain with the architecture and design of their interiors (Marie Bonaparte, Maurice Martin du Gard, Pierre Meyer, Marie Laure de Noailles…).
While Pierre Legrain was beginning to gain popularity in the American market, notably through the intermediary of the Franco-American art dealer Jacques Seligmann, he died of a heart attack at the age of 40, the same year as the passing of Jacques Doucet. A short career that nevertheless leaves a unique mark.
The furniture created by Pierre Legrain combines exotic materials (palm or ebony wood) and more unexpected materials (leather, parchment, waxed canvas, mother-of-pearl, metal, glass). A formal play with different materials that has already been experimented with in bookbinding. The lines are both simple and graphic, yet in harmony with more surprising touches or even bold breaks. Functionalism is not the object of his designs, which are first and foremost works of art.
An unreleased reissue!
Almost a century later, Ara Ohanessian, founder of Objets d’Initiés, realizes a dream: to create a new edition of the Pierre Legrain furniture. Ara Ohannessian discovered the work of Pierre Legrain in 1972 during the auction at Drouot of the Jacques Doucet collection. An astonishment and the driving force of a life. The acquisition of two original works by the creator, an African bench and a curule, will be the starting point of a long adventure. Ara Ohannessian undertakes extensive research to catalog the entire oeuvre of Pierre Legrain, scattered in private collections and institutions around the world (the African chair can be admired in Paris at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs or objects such as a cigarette lighter at the MET in New York; several pieces have been part of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collections…). Ara Ohanessian studies the manufacturing process of the original pieces with infinite precision in order to convince the rights holders, whom he met in 2015, of the fidelity of his project to Pierre Legrain’s spirit. 13 pieces will thus be able to be the subject of a new edition in 8 copies and 3 proofs: three curules, a bench, a dining table, an African bench, a coffee table, a fireplace screen, a chaise longue, a cubist armchair, a side table, a night porter and an African chair. For a manufacturing process that fully honors the creator’s talent by faithfully reproducing his works, Ara Ohanessian has called on artisans of excellence and passionate artisans of art, specialized in crafts with meticulous know-how, working with noble materials.
This reissue of the exceptional furniture by Pierre Legrain by Objets d’Initiés is available exclusively at the Hatchikian gallery. The universe of Pierre Legrain’s creations and the new edition can be discovered on the website and by appointment for more information.
