The smoking room by Pierre Paulin, at the Elysée Palace. AFP
"The greatest achievement is managing to reproduce the original work identically, using the archival footage we have," said Nathalie Célas, deputy head of the contemporary tapestry and decor workshop at the Mobilier National, France's national furniture corporation.
Since 2023, this institution, which has been tasked with preserving and restoring the French Republic's collection of heritage furniture since the 17th century, has undertaken a unique task: reviving the Elysée's smoking room, which was commissioned by former president Georges Pompidou, and designed and inaugurated by designer Pierre Paulin (1927-2009) in 1972.
The restoration was carried out with the help of teams from the Research and Creation Workshop (ARC), a body created in 1964 at the initiative of then-culture minister André Malraux, which creates furniture and furnishings based on drawings and models by contemporary designers.
An 'iconic' and 'historic' work
The small circular room was located in the Elysée's former Napoleon III library, which was part of the president's private apartments. It was conceived as a semi-official space, an intimate room for the president to retreat to after dinner. Loosely inspired by Bedouin tent shapes, Paulin's smoking room was decorated in soft, amber tones and furnished with low bench seats arranged in a crescent shape. At the center stood a flower-shaped table made of opalescent Altuglas, with white petals encircling a luminous heart. The tables' bases were crafted by a foundry and coated with Nextel, a polyester microbead-based paint that was used in the cabins of the Apollo spacecraft modules, which had carried the first men to the moon in July 1969.
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