Overvalued/Undervalued: Design Miami in New York

Overvalued
Jean Royére, Console "Tour Eiffel" (c. 1950), $90,000. On view at Sonnabend Gallery

Paris dealer Patrick Seguin, who has had exceptional success championing the designs of Jean Prouve, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret, here teams up with fellow Parisian Jacques Lacoste to stage an elaborate retrospective of the glitzy French designer Jean Royere (1902-1981) in Sonnabend’s starkly minimalist Chelsea gallery (through April 12). The show features approximately one hundred Royere objects — arranged in five rooms warmed up by designer India Madhavi’s stage set of Svenskt fabrics, faux wall painting, and plush carpets — that look at once spectacular and dated.

Royere’s sleek console in black-tinted glass and brass is an impressive construction, inspired in part by the elegant steel strut work of Eiffel’s tower, but it doesn’t carry the echo of Prouve or Perriand so in vogue today. Royere, after all, was a grand interior designer, not an architect, who took on commissions from some of the most ostentatious monarchs of his time, including the Shah of Iran, King Farouk of Egypt, and King Hussein of Jordan. Still, in a show where many works have already sold in the low six figures, the console stands out as one of the more modestly priced items.

Courtesy Patrick Seguin