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Andrée Christine Aynard was born into a wealthy family of bankers and notables from Lyon. Her paternal grandfather, Edouard Aynard, founded the Maynard & Sons Bank; her paternal grandmother, Rose de Montgolfier, was a descendant of the hot-air balloon inventors’ family. Her father was a graduate from the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure who spoke seven languages but swore to a life of austerity and seclusion to protest against his own milieu; her mother, Louise Saint-René Taillandier, was a concert pianist who found comfort in the frivolity of “being a great artist without a stage”.
The Andrée Putman Studio (1997–nowadays)
In 1997, Andrée Putman created her eponymous Studio, specialising in interior design, product design and scenography. When she imagined objects, she refused the excess of striving to re-design pieces which were perfectly designed by others in the past. “We have to accept that many things can no longer be changed – or very slightly. If we change them, we have to add humour, detachment. What interests me: a joke in a collection, a sign of complicity.” For example, when she began collaborating with Christofle in 2000, she designed a collection of silver cutlery, objects and jewellery named Vertigo. The common element of this collection was a slightly twisted ring: “the fact that this ring is twisted brings life to it: did it fall? Why is it asymmetrical? Life is made of imperfections.”She created a Champagne bucket for Veuve Clicquot and reinterpreted the iconic Louis Vuitton Steamer Bag. In 2001, Putman created “Préparation Parfumée”. In 2003, she launched her own line of furniture “Préparation meublée” where the pieces were ironically named “Croqueuse de diamants”, “Jeune bûcheron”, “Bataille d’oreillers”… (“Gold digger”, “Young lumberjack” and “Pillow fight”). In 2004, she creates a stunning Russian tea set for Gien: Polka. An interior designer, she carried out the projects for Pershing Hall in Paris, the Morgans Hotel in Manhattan, and the Blue Spa at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich. In 2005, Guerlain chooses the Studio Putman to re-design its flagship store on the Champs Elysées. Among notable private commissions are the Pagoda House in Tel Aviv, the vast SoHo penthouse for Serge and Tatiana Sorokko, and a cliff-house in Tangier for Bernard-Henri Lévy and Arielle Dombasle, for whom Putman completely restructured the building.
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