page_title: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Le cabinet de travail du Maharajah d'Indore Mobiliers de Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933) À gauche, meuble d'appui, 1932, ébène de macassaret bronze chromé, Paris, Galerie Vallois À droite, Canapé, 1932, ébène de macassar et cuir, Collection particulière Le Musée des Arts Décoratifs met à l’honneur l’extraordinaire figure du maharajah d’Indore qui donne libre cours à son goût d’avant-garde artistique et décorative en créant, en Inde, un univers moderne unique. Personnalité visionnaire du milieu culturel européen des années 1920-1930, il est le commanditaire de la toute première construction moderniste de son pays&#160;: le palais Manik Bagh (1930-1933), témoignage de l’effervescence de la scène artistique de l’époque. Extrait du site officiel L'exposition &quot;Moderne Maharajah, un mécène des années 1930&quot; au Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris &lt;a href="https://madparis.fr/francais/musees/musee-des-arts-decoratifs/expositions/expositions-en-cours/moderne-maharajah-un-mecene-des-annees-1930/#article7600" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;madparis.fr/francais/musees/musee-des-arts-decoratifs/exp...&lt;/a&gt; Les photographies des oeuvres majeures de cette exposition (mobiliers, portraits) sont interdites, la plupart des oeuvres non interdites sont sous droit Adagp, leur diffusion doit rester dans le cercle d'amis
context_page_description: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, was a French furniture designer and interior decorator, who was one of the most important figures in the Art Deco movement. His furniture featured sleek designs, expensive and exotic materials and extremely fine craftsmanship, and became a symbol of the luxury and modernity of Art Deco. It also produced a reaction from other designers and architects, such as Le Corbusier, who called for simpler, functional furniture.
context_section_description: He was born in Paris, where his father, originally from Alsace, had created successful business constructing, painting and wallpapering the interiors of housfures and apartments.  He learned the business in his youth, working alongside the painters and paper hangers. When his father died in 1907, he took over the family business and soon, with designer Pierre Laulrent he opened a second office, called Ruhlmann & Laurent, designing and making fine furniture.  The original construction business was located at 10 rue de Maleville, while the furniture was designed and displayed in showrooms at  27 rue de Lisbonne.  The profits from the construction enabled Ruhlmann to buy expensive materials and hire the best craftsmen for his furniture making. 
  For his furniture, Ruhlmann used rare and expensive woods such as ebony and rosewood, coverings of sharkskin, and handles and inlays of ivory. The forms were very simple, without ostentation.  It could take as much as eight months to make a single piece of furniture.  In his early years he had the work done by different Paris furniture workshops, but in 1923 he opened his own workshop, on Rue Ouessant in the 15th arrondissement, where his own craftsmen made the pieces.
  Ruhlmann's work received international attention at the Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925, the event which gave "Art Deco" its name.  He had his own pavilion, the Hôtel du collectionneur (House of a Collector), with full-scale displays of his furniture in palatal settings.
  His pavilion at the 1925 Exposition brought him a number of famous clients, including the Rothschild and Worms banking families, Eugène Schueller, the owner of L'Oreal, the aircraft and automobile constructor Gabriel Voisin, the fashion designer Jeanne Paquin, the writer Colette and the playwright Paul Géraldy, who asked him to design stage sets for his plays.
  He made a particularly original desk for the office of André Tardieu, the President of the French state council.  This monumental piece was painted in black lacquer. He decided to make a copy of the desk for himself, of ebony from Macassar, featuring a pivoting lamp and supports for a telephone. 
  He made another specially-designed piece for Georges-Marie Haardt, the director of the Citroen automobile company, who led several celebrated voyages of exploration. This was a rolling table for presenting drawings, which he produced in several versions, made of lacquered rosewood, oak, mahogany and linden.
  With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929, and arrival of more modernist styles, Ruhlmann made a few concessions to the new, more geometric style. In 1932 he designed a number of pieces for the Manik Bagh palace of Maharaja Yashwant Rao Holkar II of Indore State. 
  In 1933, he learned that he had a fatal illness. Before dying, he designed his own funeral monument, and decreed that his company would be dissolved and closed after his death.  He died 15 November 1933.
caption: Furniture pieces from Manik Bagh, designed by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann in 1932
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "7952", "Image ImageLength": "5304", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "ILCE-7RM2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 12.0 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2019:10:08 10:17:18", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "412", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1254", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4106", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "6400", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "6400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:10:03 19:20:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:10:03 19:20:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "352741/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "361471/100000", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-1249/640", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "463/128", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "26", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "7004", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3940", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1128", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "26", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[24, 240, 7/2, 63/10]", "EXIF LensModel": "FE 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS"}