Paul Follot (1877-1941) Marabou Bird Adorned With Vegetal Scrolls, Oak Sculpture

Paul Follot(1877-1941), son of wallpaper manufacturer Félix Follot, established himself before 1914 as one of the most refined Parisian decorators of his generation. Trained in the style of Grasset, he initially worked within the circle of La Maison Moderne before acquiring his renowned townhouse-studio on rue Victor-Schœlcher, a true manifesto of his style at the crossroads of Art Nouveau and Art Deco,a major transition that has sometimes been called Modern Style.
Around 1901, he joined Julius Meier-Graefe at La Maison Moderne, where he designed jewelry, tapestries, silverware, textiles, and bronzes in an Art Nouveau vocabulary heavily influenced by stylized Gothic and leafy scrolls. Between 1901 and 1903, this production for a cosmopolitan, luxury clientele cemented his reputation in the field of fine objects and home furnishings. In 1903, he co-founded the group L’Art dans Tout (Art in Everything), clearly placing him within the movement of French decorative art that sought to unify interior architecture, furniture, and objects in a single concept of “total art.” In 1904, he went into business for himself, managing his own workshop and catering to a wealthy clientele with a style renowned for its luxury, elegance, and quality of execution. From 1908-1909, he was a founding member of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs (Society of Decorative Artists) and participated in the Salons, where he helped open a “new path” for French decorative art, already foreshadowing certain principles of the future Art Deco through the simplification of volumes and a more geometric stylization of motifs.
Between 1910 and 1914, alongside his interior design work, he created new jewelry designs and collaborated with major companies: Wedgwood for ceramics, Cornille & Cie for textiles, and Christofle for silverware, demonstrating the expansion of his influence to the high-end industrial sector. This sculpture is the starting point of the stair railing in his townhouse on Rue Victor-Schœlcher. Around the mid-1900s, as his career as a decorator was gaining momentum, Follot conceived the design for a Parisian townhouse at 5 Rue Victor-Schœlcher, in the 14th arrondissement, intended to serve as a family home, a creative studio, and a space for showcasing his work. The building was constructed between 1912 and 1914 in collaboration with the architect Pierre Selmersheim, based on Follot's designs, making it a distillation of his decorative style. The inauguration in 1914 attracted all of Parisian high society, a sign of the prestige Follot had achieved on the eve of the war: the house was perceived as a showcase, where each room illustrated a facet of his art (furniture, textiles, woodwork, ironwork, lighting). The interior as a whole encapsulates a major stylistic transition: some rooms remain strongly marked by Art Nouveau (arabesques, stylized vegetation), while others, already more refined, foreshadow the Art Deco spirit with firmer lines, more architectural volumes, and a more structured decor. The house-studio on rue Victor-Schœlcher, which Paul Follot had to part with at the end of the 1930s, was stripped of certain decorative elements, including this marabout that we were able to find and save. Classified and preserved in its main decorative features, it was restored and redesigned in the 21st century. It has housed the Giacometti Institute since 2018. This finely sculpted marabout has been restored in its ancient part and mounted on a contemporary base.