In 1949, just returned from a tour of Scandinavia, French designer Jean Royère penned a detailed report of his journey for the magazine Le Decor d’Aujourd’hui. In his entry about Stockholm, he gushed about the jungle atmosphere at Svenskt Tenn, the design emporium run by Josef Frank. “One must lift aside vines and branches to select a candy dish,” he wrote. “In all these Nordic countries, there is a charming custom of incorporating climbing plants into interiors. I have seen living rooms where ivy zigzags around paintings and mirrors, circling the walls several times, and dining rooms where Virginia creeper trails down into the chandeliers.”
Soon after, Royère designed Liane—vine in English—a series of squiggly, hand-forged tubular steel lamps that crawled across the wall like ivy, with the stems held in a bouquet by a block at the base. Site-specific wall pieces made in the mid ’50s evolved into chandeliers, sconces, and even a tangled floor lamp, all of which got a coat of coral, blue, or black house paint (a few were gold leafed) that lent a unique, aged texture. Their cylindrical shades, with a color-matched paper trim, were made of cellulose acetate.
Estudio EA