Rive droite

Olivia Putman is a French designer born in 1964 in Paris. She is the daughter of Andrée Putman, an internationally renowned interior architect and designer. Olivia Putman works in interior architecture, set design and design. In 2007, her mother Andrée Putman entrusted her with the artistic direction of Studio Putman. She began her career at the legendary agency by renovating the Morgans Hotel in New York, originally imagined by her mother.

She soon designs an outdoor furniture line for Fermob, a glasses collection, rugs for Toulemonde Bochart, furniture for Silvera, the set design for the Madeleine Vionnet exhibition at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, a fabric collection for Pierre Frey... and in 2011 takes over the artistic direction of Maison Lalique. So many worlds in which she expresses her conception of luxury — which lies more in the rightness of things than in their brilliance.

"Drucker is first and foremost a dazzling burst of colour, like in a Jacques Demy film," she says. "From a very young age, I fell under the spell of the marriage between raw, rough rattan and shiny plasticised threads. Later, I felt the desire to better understand the know-how of this house — which absolutely must be valued and protected. If only to defend the values it carries: its art, its identity, its obsession with quality, its respect for creation."

Before joining Studio Putman in 2007, the young woman — then a landscape designer — would often go to the Gilocourt manufactory to choose seats and furniture to brighten up the gardens of clients who had entrusted her with their estates. "Paris, its bistros and café terraces immediately come to mind when I think of Drucker chairs," she continues. "Their reassuring shapes belong to our collective memory. Each creation is a kind of bridge between yesterday and today. I've owned one for over ten years, and even today, it looks brand-new." For this project, the designer focused above all on optimising production costs, so that her creation would be offered at an affordable price. "I love designing objects intended for daily use, that fit into any kind of atmosphere. I picture this chair just as well on a terrace overlooking the Alpilles as in a very contemporary kitchen."
Maison Drucker had already produced a chair for Andrée Putman, which she named "Rive Gauche". If Olivia Putman named her chair Rive Droite, directly inspired by her mother's, it is not only as a tribute to her mother but above all to evoke a change of life — or of bank. "My family was very Rive Gauche," she confirms, "and that's the name, Rive Gauche, that my mother Andrée Putman gave to the chair she designed for Maison Drucker. I discovered the Rive Droite only a few years ago, and I've completely adopted it ever since."