A passage to India

The latest edition of FAB fair in Paris lives up to its name with a selection of stylish Art Deco pieces, including a chaise longue designed for the last ruling Maharaja of Indore

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ON July 30, I illustrated here an 1880s bed made of glass by Osler of Birmingham and Calcutta, a firm that collared the maharaja market. Half a century later, it was the turn of the Art Deco master Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879–1933)—and what a difference. In 1930, Yashwant Rao Holkar II, last ruling Maharaja of Indore, and Sanyogita, his first wife, commissioned a palace from the German architect Eckart Muthesius (1904–89), whom he had met at Oxford. The Manik Bagh, or ‘Garden of precious Stones’, was a Bauhaus building in a Mughal garden, filled with furnishings by European Modernist designers, such as Ruhlmann, Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier. In 1947, Indore joined the Indian Union and later the palace became a government office and eventually the contents were sold.

Among the pieces designed by Ruhlmann as part of a suite for the maharaja's study was an adjustable chaise longue, although it does not seem to have been actually bought by the Indore ruler. In black-lacquered wood and with chromed metal mounts, it is supported on skis and has controlled heating. It is shown in a special exhibition of masterpieces of Art Deco furniture organised by Galerie Valois within the FAB Paris fair held at the splendidly restored Grand Palais in the French capital (September 20–24). This year marks the centenary of the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name, albeit posthumously (‘Heart Deco’, August 13), which took place at the same venue.