JULES LELEU
Jules-Emile Leleu (1883 – 1961) was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer. After studying in the Ecole d’arts appliqués Saint Gildas of Bruxelles, Jules Leleu entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of his native city, where he received drawing and sculpture lessons, which would provide him an intimate knowledge of the materials he would later use for his furniture. In 1910, Jules and his brother Marcel became the head of the family business of house painting. They only began making furniture after WWI and these were essentially reproduction of antique pieces. In 1920, they opened their first workshop in Boulogne.
In 1922, the Leleu brothers entered the Parisien scene by exhibiting at the Salon de la Société des Artistes français where they displayed a cabinet praised by critics and reproduced in Art et Décoration. During the same year they exhibited a dining room suite at the Salon d’Automne. The Leleu firm then abandoned the simple satisfaction of a bourgeois and local clientele to focus on the realization of luxury sets for the wealthy elite and creating only modern designs. In 1923, the French state bought a chest of drawers, an armchair and a little table.
In 1924, Jules Leleu then settled in Pairs. At the time he was considered the principal emulator of Ruhlmann. Leleu was known for using superb craftsmanship and expensive materials — warm woods like ebony, palissander, and walnut, ivory inlays, and lavish escutcheons and other metalwork embellishments. His earlier designs can look almost indistinguishable from Ruhlmann’s. In 1925 the Leleu brothers exhibited at the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs where they showed their many new creations in various pavilions. They displayed sets and pieces at the Ambassade française, in the class 8 (furniture) and at the stand of the Selmersheim gallery where he received the Grand Prix for the design of a buffet.
At the end of the 1920’s Jules Leleu began prestigious work as an interior designer. The firm was commissioned to design all the appointments for an interior — tapestries, lighting fixtures, furniture, rugs, fabrics and metalwork. His first great realization was the interior of the apartments of businessman Michaël Winburn, from 1927 to 1928, in a purified and rather modernist style. Prestigious commissions then followed; the renovation of the Parisian head office of the Compagnie des Lampes was exemplary.
The creations of the 1930’s tend to be characterized by constant simple shapes, pieces without ornamentation and by the appearance of discreet metallic elements on the furniture — bases, locks, handles and table legs. During this period Jules Leleu involved his daughter Paule in the company, making her the head of the textile department, while his son André was in charge of supervising sites. The Leleu firm had numerous commissions for great luxury interiors of the day, of government offices, private apartments and for the Japanese emperor. The firm continued to be active until 1973 with children André and Paule Leleu as directors.
