Maison Louis Drucker.That’s Paris!

On June 2nd, as lockdown lifted and cafe terraces across the city of Paris were given the green light to reopen, it was as though the city of light had suddenly regained its sparkle. Needless to say the web went into meltdown. Early-morning snapshots of steaming café crèmes were the first thing to fill Instagram feeds. By 1pm, they had been replaced by smiley- and heart-filled pictures of long-awaited al fresco lunches. Later in the day, it was pics of pre-dinner drinks that had rapidly been promoted to most grid worthy. You could almost hear French crooner Charles Trenet breaking into a rendition of “Y’ad’la joie!”. The French are so attached to their cafe terraces that they are even seeking UNESCO intangible cultural heritage status for their beloved bistros. Since first appearing in the XVIIIth century, cafes have been a rich melting pot of cultural and artistic expression, with customers settling outside on the terrace to effortlessly flaunt their elegance. Bistros serve up all the essential ingredients of France’s inimitable art de vivre: good wine, croissants, conversation, and white-apronned waiters working in postcard-esque surroundings, dancing their way between colourful rattan chairs and pedestal bistro tables. The woven rattan chairs in question are frequently manufactured by Drucker. The firm, which has been around for 135 years, is a veritable custodian of tradition, even holding its very own legion of honour - the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant (living heritage) label. Each Parisian establishment has its own specific design and colourway: le Fouquet’s on the Champs-Elysées, Le Café de Flore in Saint-Germain, and Le Café Français in Bastille. Drucker’s rattan chair is unquestionably an institution within the institution.

France first developed a passion for natural rattan furniture under the reign of Louis XV, when the flamboyant golds of Louis XIV’s Versailles had created a craving for something simpler. It was in the XIXth century that Empress Eugénie turned rattan furniture into a staple of the decorative arts, using it to furnish the winter gardens. And when Baron Haussmann brought wide boulevards and spacious pavements to the city of Paris, the capital’s cafes set up vast terraces where people could see and be seen. It was at that time that a young craftsman, Louis Drucker,founded his tiny 24m2 workshop in rue des Pyrénéesin north-east Paris, along with one other colleague. It didn’t take long for their creations to catch the public’s eye, even winning them a handful of awards. In 1919, Louis Drucker published his first promotional catalogue and his wife and children joined the family business, marketing an extensive range of products that included lights, mirrors, bedheads, planters and even rattan umbrella stands. The Roaring Twenties, just after the First Word War, marked the heyday of the Parisian terrace. As more and more orders began rolling in, Drucker moved his workshop out of Paris and further north to the town of Gilocourt in the Oise region, where it remains to this day.

“Endless combinations of shapes, weaves and hues”

The art of working with rattan, be that steaming and bending the long canes for the frame or hand-weaving the strands for the seat, has since been handed down through the generations from father to son and mother to daughter. It takes three specialised artisans to craft a single chair: a rattan worker for the structure, a caner for the seat and backrest, and a carpenter for the wooden base. The firm has always sourced its raw materials from Indonesia. It takes six to thirty hours to hand craft each chair, from bending the rattan into shape with the help of a wooden jig to the addition of trim to hide the staples. The finished chairs are all beautifully lightweight and easy to stack. When the terraces close at the end of the day, whilst the pedestal tables can be rolled back inside, the high stacks of chairs need to be picked up and carried - a key skill that any good garçon de cafémust learn very early on...

The firm has successfully weathered a number of storms over the years, including the Great Depression of 1929, two world wars and even the recent Coronavirus pandemic, during which workers hand-wove the seats in their homes whilst the workshop continued to operate with a skeleton staff. Having been handed down from father to son until the early 1980s, the firm trod water in the Nineties and Noughties before almost going under. But in 2006, it was taken over by Bruno Dubois, who had fallen under the hundred-year-old’s spell. This savvy businessman brought Maison Drucker back from the brink of extinction by calling on the world’s top designers to help breathe new life into the brand. Philippe Starck was enamoured with the concept and came up with an eclectic idea for the Mama Shelter hotel terraces, blending the age-old stunner with its more contemporary counterparts to create an exciting mix-and-match vibe. India Mahdavi, meanwhile, gave the piece her own vibrant injection of colour, as did Sarah Lavoine. Dubois exhibited at Maison&Objet right from the very start, making some absolutely crucial encounters. “It was the great French architects that exported style to the rest of the world”, he smiles. “Maison&Objet was decisive for us. Today, we work with around fifty countries, and classic Parisian style is exceedingly popular.” The chair can now be spotted all around the world, including in the gardens of Hollywood’s Château Marmont, at the Brasseries Georges in Brussels, the Café Europa in Copenhagen and the Brasserie Marion in Miami. 50% of Drucker’s turnover is generated by exports. Endless combinations of shapes, weaves and hues give designers infinite options, ranging from alternating chevrons, double chevrons, Grille grid patterns in two or three different hues, diamonds, twists and stars to the most highly complex masterpiece weaves going by the names of croix, paillettesand rubis. Each season, the firm also unveils a new collection of off-the-peg designs aimed at the general public as well as cafes, hotels and restaurants.

Par Caroline Tossan
Illustration © Sarah Bouillaud

Maison Louis Drucker