Discover the Stand Out Moments from PAD Saint-Tropez
From July 2-5, a neat edit of just 20 galleries gave collectors plenty of reasons to stop in and shop
On July 4, in the mythic French seaside town of Saint-Tropez, the weekly Saturday market filled the Place des Lices with wares from fresh cheeses to sundresses that fluttered in the occasional breeze. Hermès-adjacent scarves and leather key trays took up other stalls. But across the road, in a two-story building used for small exhibitions, something with verified provenance was taking place.
PAD, or the Pavilion of Art and Design fair, which held its first edition in Paris in 1998 and has been in London every October since 2007, was three days into its first Saint-Tropez adventure. And it was going well. With a neat edit of just 20 galleries, inside the venue historic French decorative arts and English painting met contemporary works from Lebanon and Portugal, and big jewelry from Spain’s Julia Muñoz. Collectors seemed to find time between the charm of their yachts, an Apéro at the 55, and the promise of late-night parties to look and, in many cases, shop. The Schwarzmans—whose name appeared on the Members committee along with Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Graff, Paul-Emanuelle Rieffers and a number more—had snapped up a wall piece by Portuguese artist Sebastião S Lobo, at Lisbon-based Galeria da Estrela on day one. A suite of pneumatic sofa and two armchairs by René Drouet—pure late 1930s spirit—was also acquired on the opening morning.
Dealers had honed their offerings to suit the unique location. At JAG Galerie, that meant a Lesage embroidered wall panel of weeping willows, picked out in gold thread, over a daybed created from woven palm rope, both by JAG’s Jessica Berguig. “Those were my grandfather’s favorite trees,” explains Berguig, who often works with Lesage on bespoke interiors, of the willow motif. The daybed was upholstered in a Pierre Frey fabric in a gentle salmon. “I wanted southern colors,” said Berguig.
The team at jeweler Elie Top, a Galerie Creative Mind, was trialing a new presentation of well-spaced vitrines laser-focused on particular collections. New pieces included a serpent ring and an owl pendant, finely wrought in 18-carat gold. Top declared himself thrilled with the way things were going. “It’s just the right crowd,” he said. And that was before a circular pendant of silver and gold, decorated with stones in vivid greens and blues, dazzled a collector, new to Top’s work, so much she bought it on the spot.
More new work was seen at Galeria da Estrela from Lisbon. Three large furniture pieces by Mircea Anghel, who is based near the fashionable resort of Comporta, were earmarked by a collector, maybe measuring up before acquiring works at such scale. They included a seat with a bentwood back nearly 6.5 feet long, and a bench carved from a single block of shimmering white marble. Gallery owner Joao Luz Ferreira, a former lawyer, was manning the stand with his wife Ines, an architect. They agreed that they are both drawn to designers whose work plays on human behavior and, like Anghel’s, disrupts expectations.
House of Today, the design platform run by Cherine Magrabi Tayeb, who is also vice president of the PAD Saint-Tropez committee, chose a single ceramist, Tamar Hadechian. Hadechian’s delicate work is the result of a late career change. The former dentist moved to Copenhagen following the damaging explosion in Beirut in 2020, and set about fulfilling her artistic dreams instead. “I’ve always painted,” Hadechian told Galerie, “but when I finally got hold of a lump of clay, things started coming out. I wanted to demonstrate that it’s OK to be vulnerable.” Her pieces are alluringly fragile, marked with her own fingerprints, and in a range of pinks, yellows, and reds. “I don’t use any tools; I just follow the clay,” she explained.
At Stefanidou Tsoukala Gallery, which is based in Athens, Greece, a legendary 1985 piece by the Paris-based Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti had pride of place—a stained red chair, with a raffia skirt, known as Le Prince Imperiale. The partnership broke up in 2001, and new works by Garouste demonstrated a similarly illustrative direction, in candelabras shaped like exotic leaves, and exquisitely hand-painted in white on black.
Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval, the Parisian gallery that specializes in Art Deco and early to mid-20th-century design, also showed a female artist in a perfect pair of small armchairs by Lucie Renaudot. Little is known about her, one of only a few female designers in the period, but these designs demonstrated the desirability of her work.
Meanwhile, other activities in the area were luring visitors too: among them a Picasso exhibition at the nearby estate of Le Muy, owned by Lalanne specialist Edward Mitterrand; and a show in nearby Ramatuelle of ceramics from young Parisian gallerist Florian Daguet-Bresson. “It would be good to up the cultural offering of the area,” said Mitterrand. If nothing else, it would be another great reason to come to Saint-Tropez.