Rene Prou ​​single armchair

French Forties single armchair by Jacques Adnet in gilt forged iron. This chair is unrestored in the photos, and has the original gilt finish. The chair is 21” wide x 23” deep x 34” high, with a 17” high seat.

A decorator as well as furniture designer, Rene Prou ​​was born in Nantes and educated in Paris. He studied at the Ecole Bernard-Palissy in Paris and shortly thereafter joined the design house, Gouffé. By 1912 he had become their chief designer and was being called the first decorator of the modern taste.

Prou's varied design career included:

1922 oceanliner Paris

1922 – Paris to Deauville train (aka Train Bleu)

1923 – showed at the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs

1924 oceanliner from Grasse

1925 – with Eric Bagge designed the Chambre de Mademoiselle of Une Ambassade Française Pavilion at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris.

1926 oceanliner Ile-de-France

1928 Pomone decorating department of Bon Marché department store – where he succeeded Paul Follot as design director in 1932

1929 began designing wrought-iron furniture produced by Edgar Brandt, Raymond Subes and other metalworkers.

1930s with Rene Lalique, designed salon train carriages of the Istanbul Orient Express.

1935 oceanliner Normandy

Other work: dining room of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in NYC; board room of the Palace of the League of Nations, Geneva; Mitsubishi department store, Tokyo: and the oceanliner pier in LeHavre.

Taught at the National School of Decorative Arts.