Carlo Bugatti's French furniture - Italian furniture designer - Cover Story

Magazine Antiques, July, 1999 by Henry Hawley

Bugatti appears to have moved to Paris sometime between the 1902 exhibition and 1904, when he sold his workshop in Milan.(5) According to L'Ebe Bugatti, Carlo and his son Rembrandt jointly occupied a dwelling and had studios on the same property in the rue Jeanne d'Arc, in the thirteenth arrondissement, then a neighborhood of craftsmen's workshops. Here the elder Bugatti began to create plaster models from which castings were made in silver and other metals.(6) He was probably influenced in this activity by Rembrandt, whose sculptures, primarily of animals, were cast in bronze under the auspices of the Galerie Hebrard in Paris. Carlo's designs were also produced at the foundry owned by Adrien A. Hebrard (1866-1937), and an exhibition of his work was held at the Galerie Hebrard in December 1907.(7)

Carlo also continued to create furniture after taking up residence in Paris, but only recently has material come to light that makes it possible to identify the changes that took place in his style during these years. A good starting point is the tea table and accompanying tea service shown in Plate VII, were pictured in a photograph of 1911(8) and are now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The summary listing of objects by Bugatti exhibited at the Galerie Hebrard in 1907 included a "table avec service complet" valued at twelve thousand francs,(9) which almost certainly refers to this table and service. This hypothesis is supported by the existence of models for two of the gilt-metal mounts on the tea table, which were acquired by the Musee d'Orsay from the Bugatti family and had probably been part of the contents of the artist's atelier.

The table possesses several characteristics that distinguish it from Bugatti's earlier furniture. For while his Milanese furniture incorporated metal plaques with relief ornament, he had seldom employed cast-metal mounts before moving to France and had never before used examples of the size and weight of those on the tea table now in the Cleveland Museum. In using such mounts Bugatti was presumably responding to French cabinetmaking traditions, for mounts had figured prominently on French furniture since at least the middle of the seventeenth century.

Bugatti also seems to have been influenced by French traditions in his use of marquetry of wood, metal, mother-of-pearl, and bone or ivory on the Cleveland table. Although neither the design of the marquetry nor its materials duplicate traditional French cabinetmaking practices, the results approximate the look of French furniture. One stylistic characteristic of this table that is quite foreign to the French tradition is the use of a series of interlocking ovoid arches to create the supporting members. Egg and other ovoid shapes seem to have fascinated Bugatti during his post-Italian years.(10) He used these forms to serve functional as well as decorative ends in his French work, a concept he appear to have adapted from certain late nineteenth-century buildings with entirely revealed metal structures, such as the Maison du Peuple (1895-1899) in Brussels, designed by Victor Horta (1861-1947), and the Salle Humbert de Romans (1897-1901) by Hector Guimard (1867-1942) in Paris.