For over a decade, Claude Lalanne made her way through a garden, gathering hosta leaves and vines by hand, pressing them into electroplated baths until nature became metal. The fifteen mirrors she ultimately created for Yves Saint Laurent's Paris music room were not made on commission so much as on a dare — Saint Laurent asked whether an entire room could be enveloped in her work, she told him it would take nearly ten years, and he simply replied: why not. What followed was the most ambitious decorative undertaking of her career, and arguably of twentieth-century French design.
The Salon de Musique at 55 rue de Babylone was already one of the great interiors of its era — deep aubergine lacquer, masterworks by Dunand and Ruhlmann, a frosted glass staircase that made every entrance feel like a slow reveal. But it was Lalanne's mirrors that gave the room its soul. They caught light from the courtyard windows and set the entire composition into motion, blurring the line between sculpture, architecture, and atmosphere. Together, they do not read as fifteen separate objects. They read as one.
The extraordinary ensemble of fifteen mirrors by Claude Lalanne, will be a part of the Jean & Terry de Gunzburg Collection: Design Masters auction to be held at the historic Breuer building in New York on April 22nd, 2026.
