Eugène Printz: Still Unique

The concept remains fashionable: museums create "period rooms", letting visitors enter the world of an era or an artist. The young auctioneer Christelle Gouirand invites us to such an immersive experience in Arles on 3 October with the sale of some 30 lots Printz designed for a Paris flat in the 1930s and 1940s. They are "visually striking, incomparable and timeless," she says. The cabinetmaker's creations now fetch millions at auction, but they were already prized by privileged connoisseurs, "who, as the 1934 Printz Gallery catalogue attests, were willing to pay as much as 40,000 francs for a large chest decorated with Jean Dunand's copperware" (editor's note: around €28,900 in today’s money), says 20th-century decorative arts expert Amélie Marcilhac. From the late 1920s onwards, Printz attracted a prestigious clientele from around the world: aristocrats with a pioneering spirit or members of the financial and industrial elite. Alongside Jeanne Lanvin and the Princess de la Tour d'Auvergne was Madame V., who never replaced these pieces, which are presented intact: furniture, lighting fixtures, a large rectangular mirror with an acid-oxidised…