Time Travel in the Boardroom

By: Rebecca Dimling Cochran

March 2007

Each day at the Paris offices of AXA Group, employees work amid the kind of 18th- and early 19th-century furnishings that are normally roped off in a museum. The exquisite interior is part of an overall vision by AXA’s Chairman Claude Bébéar for their new, larger headquarters to reflect the unusual history of the business, which he has built into one of the largest insurance conglomerates in the world. “We wanted to show that AXA was at the same time a very old company [the oldest company of AXA started in the 18th century],” but because the AXA brand is just 20 years old, Bébéar adds, “it is also a fairly new company.”

To translate this into visual terms, Bébéar engaged the Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill to combine three old buildings on Avenue Matignon into a unified space. His innovative solution includes a steel-and-glass façade that also spans the roofs to create an inner courtyard.

Bofill’s futuristic structure provides an interesting counterpoint to the second part of the project: the historic restoration of the space’s main building, the Hôtel de la Vaupalière. Constructed after the death of Louis XIV, when the French court moved from Versailles back to Paris, it was designed and owned by the architect Louis-Marie Colignon. When it was completed in 1767, Colignon rented the house to the Marquis de la Vaupalière, the building’s namesake. For the next 200 years, counts, ambassadors and government ministers have called it home.

The original structure remained basically intact when AXA finally took over the property from the newspaper Le Figaro. The interior decoration, however, had not fared so well, and to return it to its 18th-century state took the hand of a master. For that, Bébéar selected the most prominent period designer in Paris, François-Joseph Graf.

Graf, whose recent projects include the renovation of the Grand Palais—where the prestigious Biennale des Antiquaires was held last year for the first time since 1992— and the period rooms at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, began by researching documents about the Hôtel’s original décor. “When someone dies, you have a description at his death of all the boiseries [wood paneling], the mirrors, the furniture, even the color of the curtains and the fabrics,” says Graf. “So we had a wonderful description of the inside.”

While Graf attended to such period details as the repainting of the faux-marble walls, the recreation of pilasters or the re-laying of parquet floors, he also had to contend with the requirements of a modern corporation. The boardroom, for example, seats 24 in original Empire white-and- gold lacquered chairs and also provides modern teleconferencing facilities. The two restored floors include private offices, smaller meeting rooms, a formal dining room and grand spaces where large parties can be held.

Bébéar’s goal, which he expressed to the Monument Historique overseeing the project, was to “do the best renovation that had been done in France in the last century.” This included furnishing each room with actual period pieces. In less than two years, he and his successor as chairman, Henri de Castries—both of whom are knowledgeable collectors of 18th-century antiques— worked with Graf to scour the finest antiquaires in the country, including Didier Aaron, Aveline, Galerie Kugel, Galerie Kraemer and Segoura, to uncover museumquality pieces, many of which were still in private collections.Some of their finds were astonishing. In one room is a suite of wall panels by Jean Démosthène Dugourc, a Louis XVI chandelier with 24 candles and Louis XVI putti wall lamps in gilt bronze. Another room showcases a Louis XV firescreen, sofa and six armchairs covered in Gobelin tapestries by Nicolas Heurtaut and a sofa from the Château de la Roche-Guyon (the remainder of the set is in the Louvre). These rest on a massive Aubusson carpet dating from the 19th century, that Graf believes was “probably ordered for Les Tuileries by Louis XVIII after the French Empire.”

For one of the smaller meeting rooms, Graf took a 17th-century leather screen from Holland that was gilded, stamped and painted with designs of exotic birds and flowers and used the panels to line the walls.

For another small room he chose an extraordinary oversized chandelier commissioned by King Louis-Philippe for the wedding of his youngest son, Antoine d’Orleans, Duc de Montpensier. This hangs above a large table and chairs emblazoned with them coat of arms of the Mortemarts, one of the oldest families in France whose most renowned member, Madame de Montespan, was the mistress of Louis XIV. The dining room is dominated by a collection of silver by Lewin Dedeke that was owned by Louis XVI’s cousin, the Prince of Hanover, and a massive 18-branch silver chandelier by Robert Garrard II.

These major pieces serve as anchors around which Graf arranged some of the finest period furniture, including a pair of low Louis XVI bookcases by André-Charles Boulle, corner cabinets with panels in Chinese lacquer by Jacques Dubois, a pair of Régence bookcases by Charles Cressent, a pair of Louis XVI console tables by Adam Weisweiler, a Louis XV upright writing desk by Joseph Baumhauer and a set of armchairs and a settee by Georges Jacob, which is illustrated in a drawing conserved in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. In addition there are urns, clocks and the most extraordinary régulateur de parquet (tall, standing clock) with inlaid brass marquetry made by Boulle. One particular favorite of both Bébéar and Graf is a royal Savonnerie carpet that was discovered in excellent condition in England. “Carpets in this period were just used in the winter and they were rolled and sent to storage for summer,” Graf explains. “So if this carpet was just used on the north of the house, it is almost as if new. The blue is blue, the red is red. It’s amazing.”

Graf augmented the antiques with brocade wall fabrics and lush curtains he had woven in the Prelle factory in Lyon and embroidered by Jean-François Lesage in Madras, India. He designed each pattern based on historical precedents, such as sketches of Dugourc for the bed of Empress Josephine at her chateau Malmaison and for curtains intended for the state chamber of Louis XVI in Versailles.

Graf’s attention to detail is extraordinary. “Nobody can tell what has been done in this house,” he says. “That was the point of the restoration.” There is a feeling of authenticity in the space, and Bébéar and Graf succeeded in their goal of letting visitors “be in a very serious and elegant French house that [would] show people the French taste of the turn of the 18th century.” They have done more than just show it: With employees and visitors using the space on a daily basis, they have brought the period alive once again.

Rebecca Dimling Cochran, ART & ANTIQUES’ Atlanta correspondent, is an art critic and curator.