Cooper Hewitt says...
Paul Follot (French, 1877 - 1941) was a leading designer of furniture, objects, and interiors whose career spanned several stylistic periods, from Art Nouveau to Art Deco, and many media, including furniture, silver, clocks, light fixtures, jewelry, carpets, textiles, and wallpapers.
Follot was born in Paris in 1877, the son of noted wallpaper manufacturer Félix Follot. He studied design and sculpture under Art Nouveau pioneer Eugène Grasset (French, 1841 – 1917), and succeeded him at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. In his early career, he created Art Nouveau silver, jewelry, and textiles for La Maison Moderne, Julius Meier-Graefe’s Paris gallery, and was a medal winner at the 1900 Paris Exposition.
In 1904 Follot started his own decorating company, creating luxury interiors and furnishings for wealthy clients. He was a founding member of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs, and regularly participated in their annual exhibition, the Salon d’Automne. He was also a founding member of L’Art dans Tout, a group that supported French luxury craftsmanship and eschewed mass production. Over the course of his career, he designed silver for Christofle, china for Wedgewood, carpets for Savonnerie, and textiles for Tassinari & Chatel. He, along with Paul Iribe, Marice Dufrène, André Mare, and Louis Süe developed a new decorative idiom rooted in French tradition, in particular the neo-classicism of Louis XVI.
In 1923, he became the artistic director of Le Bon Marché’s decorative arts workshop, Pomone, where he designed more affordable versions of the luxury home furnishings for which he had become famous. He designed every room of the Pomone pavilion for the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, collaborated with René Crevet on the design of the Art & Industry exhibits, and created the antechamber of the fantasy Ambassade Française. In 1928 he joined Serge Chermayeff at the English furniture company Waring & Gillow’s Paris office, and in 1931 resumed his independent interior design business. He created interiors for several luxury ocean liners, including the Paris (1921), the Atlantique (1931) and the Normandie (1935). Follot died in Sainte Maxime, on the French Riviera, a few years later.
