In 1925, the most prestigious event for the decorative arts, L'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, was held in Paris, located on the Esplanade des Invalides. For the exhibition Jean Dunand was appointed by Maurice Bukanowski, the President of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs, to produce an entire interior for one of the rooms within the French Embassy Pavilion.
The present unique and important pair of wall-panels is from the smoking room interior that Jean Dunand created for the French Embassy Pavilion. Dunand applied black, red and silver lacquered interior panelling to the walls and lacquered furniture which sat beneath an ascending ziggurat ceiling. Henri Clouzot wrote in La Renaissance de l'Art in July of the same year about the Dunand interior that “although the whole is small in size, the overall impression was truly of exceptional quality, and everyone could be proud of this choice and congratulate lacquers from oriental artists and on having been able to apply that secret so felicitously to our modern Western civilisation”.
The couturier Jacques Doucet wrote Jean Dunand after visiting the smoking room to express his tribute to the interior “I have always admired your work, but what I saw today showed complete mastery and confirmed in every way your greatness as an artist”.