Jean ROYERE (1902-1981)

Jean Royère chose to embark on a career as an interior designer relatively late, having started off in the domain of banking and export. It was only in 1931 that he began to familiarize himself with the creation of furniture, Faubourg Saint Antoine.
It was not long, however, before Jean Royère began to win competitions and gain renown amongst Parisian designers and collectors.
In 1934 Royère met Pierre Gouffé who took him on to create modern interior designs and pieces of furniture. Convinced of his talent, Gouffé encouraged him to participate in the Salon d’Automne in 1934 and in the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1935.
In 1937, when the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques took place, Royère was entrusted with the design of seventeen pavilions (devoted to artist-designers, aluminium, ceramics, private architecture, new-borns, furnishings etc). He was one of the most original and creative designers of the time.
In 1942 Royère opened his first gallery at 5, rue d’Argenson and expanded beyond France straight after the war, working in Egypt (1946), Lebanon (1947) and then in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. He completed vast projects abroad such as the creation of the Senate in Teheran in Iran (1958-60).
From 1953 Jean Royère also began to explore South America, opening agencies in Peru and Brazil.
He nonetheless concentrated primarily on work in Paris. He moved to a new, much larger gallery at 184 rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré in 1947, where he remained until the early 1970s.
An American resident from 1972, Royère left France for good in 1980 having put his collection of furniture – a glimpse of forty years of creation – up for public auction. He died one year later in Pennsylvania.
At the beginning of his career, Jean Royère was very much influenced by the famous designers of the 1930s such as Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, but also by modern artists such as Djo Bourgeois. Self-taught, Royère developed a very personal, original and ingenious style between 1933 and 1939 that was, as he said, unattached to any school. His one unshakeable belief was that perfection lies in the harmony of the finished piece. Humorous, poetic, magical but also often daring, his astonishing, otherworldly creations reflect not only his powerful imagination, but also, in a broader way, the renewal of modern style.