Jean Royère
1902–1981
Paris decorator whose furniture went soft and animal exactly as French modernism was going rectilinear, and who signed almost none of it.
1902–1985
Sculptor who made furniture in bronze rather than iron, populating tables and lamps with cats, birds and foxes at the scale of a hand.
Why they matter
Diego Giacometti worked for decades in the Paris studio he shared with his brother Alberto, making armatures, casting, patinating and modelling. He was widely recognised in his own right only after Alberto's death in 1966, and the last twenty years of his life produced almost everything now attached to his name.
The method was a sculptor's: model in plaster, cast in bronze, then patinate. Tables, consoles, chandeliers, chairs and andirons carry small animals as structural details rather than as applied ornament. The commissions were institutional as often as private, including the Fondation Maeght, the Musée Chagall and the furnishing of the Musée Picasso in Paris.
Over five hundred items from his studio went to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1986. Because bronze is heavy and expensive, what circulates most freely under his name is wrought iron by other hands.
Available now
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Key forms & materials
Forms
- Berceau table
- Carcasse table
- Bronze console
- Animal andirons
- Bronze chandelier
- Bronze guéridon
Materials
- Patinated bronze
- Plaster
- Glass
- Iron
What to look for
Marks, editions, patina and production partners — fact-checked for this designer.
- Genuine casts are normally signed DIEGO in the bronze, sometimes twice on a single structure, and some carry a D.G. monogram.
- Authentication runs through the Diego Giacometti estate and recognised experts rather than through a mark alone, and anything at serious money should arrive with paperwork.
- Material is the first filter: he cast in bronze, so a wrought iron and glass console is by definition not his work whatever the listing says.
- The market is full of pieces openly described as in the style of or à la manière de Diego Giacometti, and that phrasing is accurate and should be preserved rather than tidied away.
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