Dining Room Suite

The dining suite designed by Jacques Dupuis for the Dumont home in Braine-le-Comte comprises a rectangular table, eight dining chairs, a sideboard, a trolley and a bar.

The suite is typical of the post-war period that heralded the success of design and exhibits particularly dynamic lines.

Jacques Dupuis’s audacity lies in the details of his design: the table and chair feet are tapered and sheathed in copper, their extremities ending in three facets, with rounded trihedrons. The pieces of the dining table top were assembled using dove-tailing, an old technique brought up to date and even made visible and used as a decorative element. Other remarkable aspects are the pointed armrests of the dining chairs and the small inlaid stars used to conceal the heads of nails and the nuts of the feet.

Zéphir Busine, an artist who worked across various sectors of the decorative arts, decorated the low sideboard, giving it a unique character and interrupting the first sober impressions conveyed. The rounded profiles and tapered feet that characterize the whole suite feature here too.

The trolley, on wheels, was designed in a trapezoid shape that gives it its originality. Here too, dovetailing provides an additional decorative touch.

The last piece of the dining suite, the bar, seems somewhat understated, but inside there is a mirror, attached to the back of the bar, which provides a certain dynamism seen through the slats of the doors. Jacques Dupuis was fascinated by the playful effects of mirrors and they were a recurrent feature of his architecture.