Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann

His furniture featured sleek designs, expensive and exotic materials and extremely fine craftsmanship, and became a symbol of the luxury and modernity of Art Deco.

He was born in Paris, where his father, originally from Alsace, had created successful business constructing, painting and wallpapering the interiors of houses and apartments.

The profits from the construction enabled Ruhlmann to buy expensive materials and hire the best craftsmen for his furniture making.

[2] For his furniture, Ruhlmann used rare and expensive woods such as ebony and rosewood, coverings of sharkskin, and handles and inlays of ivory.

His pavilion at the 1925 Exposition brought him a number of famous clients, including the Rothschild and Worms banking families, Eugène Schueller, the owner of L'Oreal, the aircraft and automobile constructor Gabriel Voisin, the fashion designer Jeanne Paquin, the writer Colette and the playwright Paul Géraldy, who asked him to design stage sets for his plays.

He made another specially-designed piece for Georges-Marie Haardt, the director of the Citroen automobile company, who led several celebrated voyages of exploration.

This was a rolling table for presenting drawings, which he produced in several versions, made of lacquered rosewood, oak, mahogany and linden.

In 1932 he designed a number of pieces for the Manik Bagh palace of Maharaja Yashwant Rao Holkar II of Indore State.