Lot 551: ERNEST BOICEAU (1881-1950)

ERNEST BOICEAU (1881-1950) A CARPET, CIRCA 1930 hand-knotted wool pile 66 x 106 in. (167.6 x 269.2 cm.) signed EBoiceau

167.6 x 269.2 cm.

CIRCA 1930

Sotheby's, New York, 12 June 1998, lot 239.

Ernst Boiceau studied painting, drawing and architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, learning at the same time the craft of tapestry. After traveling and painting for ten years in the early 1900s, he returned to Paris, devoting himself to embroidery and upholstery. He soon earned recognition as an embroiderer, serving the great Paris couture houses. In 1928, he opened an interior decorating firm which flourished until the outbreak of World War II. Boiceau was a regular exhibitor of furniture and furnishings, including carpets, at the Salons d’Automne and attracted major commissions from French and American clients. In the 1920s, Boiceau adapted to carpet-making the Cornléy stitch – a technique invented by Emile Cornély (1824-1913) consisting of sewing onto fabric tightly twisted and juxtaposed threads to shape the desired design. Boiceau’s carpets show extraordinary technical and aesthetic originality. The present example, with its lush and fluid stylised floral motifs reflects the tenacity of the decorative aspects of Art Deco at a moment when angular and abstract Modernist motifs, such as those evidenced in the da Silva-Bruhns carpet for the Maharaja of Indore (lot XXXXXXXXXXX) were enjoying favor. A similarly sumptuous carpet by Boiceau occupied pride of place in the grand salon of the rue de Bonaparte apartment of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé.