Collection: Elizabeth Garouste

Elizabeth Garouste is a major figure of French design. Trained at the École Camondo, she began in theatre set design before meeting Mattia Bonetti. Their collaboration started in 1980 with the decoration of the club Le Privilège, at the Palace. In 1981, their exhibition at the Galerie Jansen introduced the Barbare chair and earned them the nickname “the new barbarians”: a neo-baroque style built on ornament and references to ancient cultures, the opposite of functionalist design.

The duo went on to create the Marquise chair (1982) and the Prince Impérial chair (1985), and was represented by the Galerie Néotu, opened in 1984 by Pierre Staudenmeyer and Gérard Dalmon. Elizabeth Garouste also developed a personal body of work, between poetry, craftsmanship and formal freedom, found in the “Sienne” floor lamp and the “San Remo” candelabra in patinated or gold-leafed wrought iron.