The Rarest Finish of All

The sun rose early that morning in Hong Kong and turned the normally blue-green waters of that famous harbor to an incredible vivid turquoise. . The sampans bobbed lazily up and down with their inhabitants barely awake as we rushed from our hotel on the final leg of a buying trip that had taken us through the old and new of Bangkok and then to the antique shops of Changmai in northern Thailand near the border of Burma now known as Myanmar.

But this day was special. On a buying trip that had been filled with exciting and unusual artifacts and furniture, I instinctively knew that today would be a rare treat and wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I knew that Maitland-Smith was a virtual repository of all that has come to be known as “treasures of the Orient” and as the elevator came to an abrupt stop in this old warehouse section of the city, I found myself tingling with anticipation at what I might find. I wasn’t disappointed.

We were barely passed the reception area when I beheld what is still to me the rarest and most beautiful of all finishes – shagreen. My love affair with this precious material began that very moment and continues to this day. As a designer of furniture and interiors I have dealt with countless finishes – real and faux – from precious, exotic woods to the equally fabulous Italian goatskin – but never had I encountered any material to equal what I was now seeing.

The tables lay before me covered with boxes of all different sizes and shapes – in colors of pale pink, ivory, charcoal and green - and some colors that probably have never been named. Many of these were inlaid with bone (not human I hoped!) and ebony incrustations. What kind of material could this be, I wondered, and immediately turned to my gracious guide for some explanation. She was somewhat amused at my bewildered anticipation and patiently gave me a primer about my new found love.

She began by telling me that the word shagreen derives from the French “chagrin” which I knew meant “anxiety” or “annoyance” and that it referred to the irritated or rough hides of sharks and rayfish. These inherently tough skins were flattened, processed and dyed and have been used since the 17th century to cover mostly small objects she went on to say.

Shagreen I learned had been pretty much in continuous use by royalty and the very wealthy since its introduction but underwent a significant revival during the Art Deco period. It was then that French artists and furniture designers like Jacques Emile Ruhlman and Paul Iribe rediscovered the elegance and luxury of this unusual material. Their instinctive drive towards simplicity, harmony and grace in design led them to embrace shagreen, tint it in subtle and exotic ways and then combine it with various woods, metals and ivory to create a new genre.

She further enlightened me by pointing out that after Ruhlman came the equally famous and wonderful Jean Michel Frank (whose sleek designs I have always admired and whose design sensibility greatly influences much of our furniture today) and who made chairs in leather and blue-green shagreen, cabinets in shagreen marquetry inlaid with ivory and ebony, and tables of bleached shagreen edged in bronze. She made sure to point out that these rare pieces are highly prized by connoisseurs and collectors.

And so right then and there, in the Maitland-Smith showroom in Hong Kong, I proclaimed out loud for the world to hear that I too would become one of those collectors of these magnificent pieces. I went on to procure any number of shagreen boxes, tables and chairs which I proudly offered for sale in my Los Angeles showroom – of course keeping some favorite pieces for my own personal collection.

I even went so far as to try and develop a faux shagreen finish (made of an extremely small scale crackle lacquer done in little squares to simulate the look of hides) and met with only limited success. This proved to be a rather fruitless enterprise perhaps because my heart wasn’t truly into simulating something so rare and beautiful a material as shagreen. No picture can do it justice - no facsimile can really come close. It must be seen and felt. It remains the most fascinating of exotic leathers, forever mysterious and rare.