Armand-Albert Rateau

Armand Albert Rateau (1882-1938) was a French designer, furniture maker, architect, and interior decorator. Trained at the École Boulle in Paris, he became the artistic director of the design firm Alavoine and Company at only twenty-three years of age. Rateau's first important project was a commission from the United States, to furnish the swimming pool of George and Florence Meyer Blumenthal.There, he began to work with the themes he had observed in his 1914 journey, creating the first bronze furniture pieces which would come to be so strongly associated with him. In 1919, he opened his own firm that catered to a small group of wealthy clients. His name and work became well known for his contributions to the Art Deco style gaining popularity at the time. At the height of his career in the 1920s and 30s, Rateau took commissions for French government offices, foreign embassies, and businesses like Tiffany & Co. and fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin (1920) and soon after this he began to design for the Duchess of Alba. He became one of the most important desiggners of the Art Deco furniture and decor movement in France. His works are inspired on Antiquity and have as well a focus on Egyptian based desgin.. His work on private estates often entailed restoring or recreating period details, like the late-medieval wood carving and pavements at Leeds Castle in Kent.

The furniture that he designed in 1928 for Lanvin's apartment on rue Barbet-de-Jouy in Paris was donated by Prince Louis de Polignac to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1965. The entire apartment has been created and is on display there.