Michel Dufet

Michel Andre Dufet was born on 8 December 1888 in Deville-les-Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime region of France. He trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, entering the architecture section in 1906 under Jean-Louis Pascal and later the painting section in 1911 under Raphael Collin, and he won several school medals in architectural drawing and design along the way, including a Grande Medaille d'argent from the Societe centrale des architectes in 1908.

In 1913 he founded Mobilier Artistique Moderne, known as M.A.M., a Paris decorating workshop producing modern furniture, lighting, fabrics, and wallpaper. In 1919 he launched the luxury periodical Les Feuillets d'Art with Edmond Moussie and ran an associated gallery. From 1922 to 1927 he directed an interior design firm in Rio de Janeiro before returning to France, where he co-directed the Atelier d'Art du Bucheron with Leandre Vaillant from 1928.

Dufet's furniture reached a wide public through major commissions: interiors for the ocean liner Ile-de-France in 1927, furniture for Marechal Lyautey at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale Internationale in Paris, forty first-class cabins for the ocean liner Normandie in 1935, participation in the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris, and design of the French Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. He was made Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur in 1936 and promoted to Officier in 1952.

Dufet married Rhodia Bourdelle, daughter of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, and after the Second World War he worked on the layout of the Musee Bourdelle in Paris, later serving as its curator from 1972. He died in Paris on 2 August 1985.

No verbatim, attributable critical assessment of Dufet from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed in current sources, so none is quoted here. What is well documented is institutional recognition: his furniture and archive form a dedicated fonds at the Musee Bourdelle in Paris, entered by bequest from Rhodia Dufet-Bourdelle in 2002, and a group of his Art Deco furniture was bequeathed to the Departement de Seine-et-Marne for the Musee-jardin Bourdelle in Egreville. The Musee Bourdelle reopened a dedicated Salle Michel Dufet in 2025, and the Departement de Seine-et-Marne has mounted an exhibition framing him explicitly as an Art Deco designer worth rediscovering, both signs of renewed institutional attention to his work.

The highest reported auction result for Michel Dufet is USD 206,604 for a Paire de fauteuils sold at Christie's Paris in 2026, per MutualArt, which cites it as the artist's record price since 2011; the exact sale date could not be confirmed. A separate, lower result of EUR 9,914 for a tapestry titled Tapis sold at Artcurial in Paris is also documented. Public auction data for Dufet is limited relative to better-known Art Deco contemporaries, and his furniture more often changes hands through specialist Art Deco dealers than through headline evening sales. Galleries currently known to handle his work include Avant-Garde Gallery and Ecart in Paris and Calderwood Gallery in Philadelphia.

There is no catalogue raisonne of Dufet's own furniture and decorative output, so provenance and museum comparanda carry the weight of authentication; his separate role co-authoring a catalogue raisonne for Antoine Bourdelle concerns Bourdelle's sculpture, not Dufet's own furniture. His market has limited public auction history: the highest reported result is USD 206,604 for a Paire de fauteuils at Christie's Paris in 2026, though the exact sale date is unconfirmed, and a lower EUR 9,914 result for a tapestry at Artcurial is also on record. These figures should be read as data points rather than a settled ceiling. Collectors should expect a market driven by specialist Art Deco dealers, with museum holdings at the Musee Bourdelle, the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Reims, and the Musee-jardin Bourdelle in Egreville serving as the clearest anchors for attribution and historical importance.