Interview with Jeremy Pradier-Jeauneau

By Katia Kulawick-Assante

How did you discover the world of design?

I grew up in Versailles and used to visit the palace gardens every weekend: the Sailors’ Alley, the Grand Canal, the Dauphin’s Groves… I think I’ve always been influenced by these decorative arts. My sister is an art historian, an expert in decorative arts and a specialist in tapestry. I studied art history at university to ‘copy’ my sister, and I was lucky enough to do an internship in cinema and quickly get hired as a producer. In my twenties, I spent a lot of time hunting for antiques. I found myself less and less interested in cinema. I was in a relationship with the son of an antique dealer. In 2014, I had the opportunity to open a small stall at Paul Bert-Serpette, at the Paris Saint-Ouen Flea Market, which was the beginning of a rather extraordinary adventure. At first, I did it as a hobby, but the business grew steadily until 2020, when I professionalised it and it became my main activity. Installation by Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau at the Hôtel de la Marine in Paris from 3 to 21 September 2025.

Have you worked on film sets?

Not at all. In production, we take care of everything; we’re like conductors. I love the fact that cinema is a total art form – which echoes my installation at the Hôtel de la Marine for Paris Design Week. In reality, the sets interact with the actors, the costumes, the music; that’s the magic of cinema. I’ve retained that taste for total art: For me, design is always interacting with something else, always in dialogue with something else, heritage, cinema, literature…

With life…

Exactly. For me, it’s a very lively design, even performative at times…

What’s next in your career?

In 2020, I want to speed things up. I have a fairly clear vision of what I want to do as a gallery owner and publisher, and I’m going to put the means in place to make it happen: I’m opening the first gallery under my name in Bordeaux, because I’m spending time there during lockdown – the flea market has been closed for almost a year. It will be my laboratory, where I will imagine what Pradier-Jeauneau will be.

Then you opened your gallery on Rue de Verneuil in Paris?

2024 was the year I launched the Pradier-Jeauneau collection, my first furniture collection as a designer, and opened the eponymous gallery on Rue de Verneuil. Over the years, our space at the Flea Market had grown to five stands. We closed four of them to keep just one – the most beautiful one in my opinion – on three levels, with a terrace overlooking the entire Paris Saint-Ouen flea market. For me, it’s the iconic stall, anchored in the heart of the flea market, the one I always dreamed of when I walked past it, and which we bought in 2023. The Flea Market is open every weekend, from Friday to Monday, and there are always surprises: we always meet new customers – that’s the beauty of this job – because they come to the Flea Market before coming to the gallery, a more intimate space where I receive visitors by appointment only. I also really like the rhythm of trade fairs, and I’m lucky that PAD – the first design fair created in 1998, which has become an unmissable event for collectors, ed. – trusts me as an exhibitor every year in Paris and London.

You say you quickly had a clear vision for your gallery. What was it?

I’m not sure I’m a great visionary of the future, nor am I a historian. I really love my era and I love the people who shape it and question it. This vision of contemporary French design was a renewal of form: I felt that we could break free from the legacy of Perriand and Prouvé to seek something else, to reinvent our tradition, while taking the history of French decorative arts and bringing it into the 21st century. I also had the conviction, which I discovered when I became a designer – I must admit that I’m discovering all this as I go along, seizing opportunities as they arise – that design today must convey meaning, through history, craftsmanship, fiction, philosophical reflection or simply through the means used. I think we really need that. I had this instinct that the renewal of contemporary creation would come through this quest for meaning. I think that today, we have fewer and fewer things in our homes – I see it with my clients – when we want a beautiful piece, it’s like a piece of jewellery, whether it’s a small table found at the flea market or a beautiful sofa at PAD. We’re increasingly moving towards jewellery-like furniture, what we call collectible design.

As a publisher, what is the common thread in your project selections?

I like to be swept away by a project. When I met Isabelle Stanislas, I told her that I loved her staircases. She is an architect, and I dreamed that she would design a sofa the way she designs staircases. With Axel Chay – long before he signed with Monoprix – I saw his house in Marseille, his wife, his children, and I understood his references and what he wanted to put into his designs. In 2025, the new addition to the catalogue is Friedmann & Versace, and they too really swept me away into their world: they love the 19th century, the Villa Kérylos… My job as an editor is to take all these references, everything they love, and bring it into my own home, necessarily – when I say we’re breaking free from the legacy of Perriand and Prouvé – always with a clear line, because that’s what I like. But I believe that clear lines and minimalism do not preclude ornamentation.

Ultimately, Pradier-Jeauneau is a mix of cultures…

Exactly, we are in a constant dialogue, and that is how I have built the gallery’s identity. Today, at my gallery, you can buy a rare bench by Charlotte Perriand from 1958 or a painting by the very talented Anaïs Vindel, who is starting to be collected around the world. That has always been at the heart of my identity; it’s what has made me recognised. I’m lucky to have clients who understand that the arts are in dialogue with each other.

You also champion contemporary art, don’t you?

Yes. That’s really how I got into the flea market, not as an antique dealer or second-hand dealer – even though I had a taste for it – but because I wanted to champion creativity.

I have a passion for French reconstruction – the invention of modern comfort – and I really wanted pieces from 1944 to interact with 2014. For me, it made sense.

Is it important to champion responsible, sustainable solutions in design when you’re a publisher?

Yes, but it’s very complicated to achieve. I’m very sceptical about people who preach. When you start out, you have a certain ambition, but you quickly come up against reality when it comes to responsible design. I only wanted made in France, but the reality is that everything is very expensive. It’s difficult to maintain when you’re a small independent player, whether it’s using renewable materials or something else. We do it, we learn by doing. But as long as the big players don’t move, we can’t follow. I recently consulted for a major luxury brand and this is what I told them: as long as you don’t change, as long as you don’t negotiate practical changes with your suppliers, I alone don’t have the financial means to make this transformation happen. To achieve this, all players, including the largest ones, must decide to make this change and the independents must follow suit. We need to talk to each other to see how we can move forward, so that sustainable development becomes a creative force rather than a constraint. And that’s really complicated in the current context. But I think it’s great that between the initial ideas, we’re evolving, we’re confronting each other, we’re looking for solutions, we’re thinking about how to do things in terms of quality, and quality inevitably comes at a price.

With your collection at Monoprix released in June and the installation at the Hôtel de la Marine during Paris Design Week, you’re adding another string to your bow, that of artist. Was this a logical next step in your career?

Life is full of surprises. I think I’ve always had that artistic side in me. I wrote during my cinema years, I set up a theatre troupe, a collective, a magazine, I exhibited photos… In short, I’ve always expressed myself in a multidisciplinary way, ever since I was a child. I stopped everything when I became a publisher and gallery owner, until I met Cécile Coquelet, the creative director at Monoprix – a wonderful human encounter. When she told me she’d like to collaborate, I replied that I’d contact my designers, but she said no, ‘if I want to sign your designers, I’ll do it directly. I’m thinking of a collection of your own.’ My first boss in cinema, Agnès Vallée, always told me, “What matters is the quality of the project”. So I designed the collection in a week – on scraps of napkins – and they liked it, and it resulted in the collection that came out in June at Monoprix. For me, it opened a door that I can no longer close, that of designer, which led to another collaboration with Maison Philippe Hurel. I realised that I could be a gallery owner, publisher and designer-artist, that it’s possible, that things can coexist fluidly.

How did the idea for this work for the Hôtel de la Marine come about?

I had mentioned it over a year ago to Pierre Gendrot, the general coordinator of Paris Design Week, because I dreamed of creating an art installation – but it was a risky venture because no one knew me for that and I had nothing to go on except ideas. I told him that I loved the Hôtel de la Marine, the Crown’s furniture repository, where, for the first time, starting in 1776, decorative arts will be exhibited and the doors of this hotel will be opened to the public free of charge on the first Tuesday of every month, from Easter to All Saints’ Day. It was revolutionary! I wanted to pay tribute to its history and make the connection between the 18th and 21st centuries. The hotel was thrilled, as were the Monuments Nationaux, and my project was chosen. It’s magnificent, I can’t tell you anything else! The craziest thing is that they trusted me as a designer-artist on the basis of sketches – I didn’t have much to show apart from my Monoprix collection. Since then, we have been working tirelessly with the teams to live up to the trust they have placed in us. I also thought to myself, since we have this incredible opportunity, let’s take advantage of it to be free, to push the boundaries: I hope to create surprise, a kind of letting go. I want people to be swept away by this labyrinth.

Can you describe this installation, which combines contemporary design, craftsmanship and heritage, in a little more detail?

It’s a total work of art with an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, an immersive work, a life-size 70m² labyrinth made of curtains, in reference to the world of theatre. It’s an invitation to enter the show: the Dedar fabric curtains, donated by Mariaflora, are magnificent, and inside there will be lots of wonderful surprises, including a partnership with Le Bon Coin, which allowed me to hunt for bargains online. The maze begins in the courtyard, then continues up the grand staircase and through the state rooms to the balcony-loggia overlooking the Place de la Concorde. It is an installation outside the frame, a real maze that plunges into the labyrinth of the hotel, which is itself a maze with its corridors and passageways. I designed 10 pieces – sculptures, designs – to be discovered along this route, in partnership with the finest workshops, such as this sofa designed and created by Phelippeau tapissier, or Maison Louis-Marie Vincent, specialists in the technique of papier-mâché, magnificent craftsmen and then guests. I still wear my curator’s hat, I enjoy it and I am lucky to work with artists such as Johanna de Clisson, whom I adore. My artistic temperament is that of the ‘gang’: I like to have people around me, the collective, I find that there is nothing more beautiful to face this era!