Rhodia and Michel Dufet's old appartement

The decor of the room was designed by the decorator Michel Dufet after his marriage with Rhodia, Bourdelle’s daughter, in 1947. The couple moved in on the first floor of the old studio building, constructed in 1878, where used to live the painter Eugène Carrière and the American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies.

Making the most of a constrained space, Dufet applied here his expertise in the layout of boat cabins. He concealed the private quarters, in the mezzanine, behind a large wooden partition embedded with a loggia and a porthole.

In the bright yellow living room, the Dufet couple accumulated furniture pieces made by Dufet, artworks by Bourdelle or from his collection, and various flea market finds. Dufet paid a special tribute to Bourdelle with metallic sconces overlaid with reproductions of drawings intended for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées – now replaced by exact replicas.

The architectural firm SAME stayed true to the spirit of Dufet’s décor by combining pieces created for this space, notably two large tables in ceramic and wood, with contemporary pieces, such as Céline Wright’s hanging lamp, and with furniture from the 1950s and 1960s – chairs by Olavi Hänninen and Pierre Gautier Delahaye, a small bookcase by Pierre Cruège.