Ref: Interview conducted by Jean-Marie Dubois, art historian, January 10, 2023
When I received the magnificent book Slavik, the Drugstore years, I was seized by a surge of emotion. This book plunged me back into my first years in Paris, in the 1960s, when I was working for Madame Desolle-Berkoff at the TAC company, based in Les Lilas and specializing in all kinds of metalworking applications.
Madame Desolle-Berkoff had quite a personality, and ran some thirty metalworkers with a masterly hand. She was very well known in the bar, café, and restaurant world. We made everything in stainless steel, all the tin counters, etc. It was 1967… Mr Probst, the owner of the Winston Churchill Pub at l’Étoile, which was already open (and which Slavik had done with TAC), also the head of the Académie de billard in Paris, had decided to bring him back as decorator for the London Tavern, rue du Sabot in the 6th arrondissement. So Madame Desolle-Berkoff asked me to attend the site meetings.
Originally, rue du Sabot really was cellars, with a packed-earth floor. I was young, I was 25. Slavik impressed me immensely. He was very friendly with the contractors, respectful of the workers, the plumbers, etc.—affable, kind to everyone.
I remember… it stuck with me: he rolled cigarettes with Amsterdamer, and he rolled them for everyone. He would arrive without a single paper plan, just with a piece of chalk to mark things out on the floor. One day, he asked the ceramicist to come with all his samples, and very quickly Slavik said to him, “What’s that?” “No, I’m not putting that in at all! I need mirrors.”
He was truly astonishing; you had to listen to everything carefully. It was fascinating! The “sketches” were crystal-clear to him. He knew exactly where he was going. He did not make mistakes.
For the London Tavern, he had demanded lamps made in Venice. At the time, Madame Desolle-Berkoff used to tell me: “When you hire Slavik, you don’t have a budget, you don’t talk budget with Slavik—you pay for Slavik.”
That is how I discovered the world of decorators, and Slavik was the first. He undoubtedly had a considerable influence on the rest of my career and on my taste for my work.
He was very tall, very elegant with everyone. For the Winston Churchill pub, he had installed ebony doors with brass handles that cost a fortune, and for the London Tavern he wanted to do the same.
The owner thought an imitation would do. When the sample arrived, Slavik said no.
He turned to me and said: “Here, you, the young lad—if you want, you can keep that for yourself.” I kept that handle and that piece of fake ebony for a long time. Slavik wanted beauty, the real thing.
Another memory comes back to me in the same vein, one that is not in the book. It was for the hairdresser Joseph Joffo on boulevard Saint-Germain. We had an order to make the wash basin for washing women’s hair. So Slavik produced an incredible drawing, with an eight-metre-long basin, like a trough, all in curves. The metalworkers had never seen anything like it and were rather doubtful. One day, Slavik came to the workshop to explain it to them. He arrived by
car, walked into the warehouses and said: “Clear everything out for me—tools, machines, instruments.” A large empty space was created. He asked for a stick of chalk and said: “I’m going to draw you the plan.” And there he was, drawing on the floor without hesitation, the length and the width with great precision. From the basin drawing, we had to adapt our metal structures. Some were worried: “How is that going to fit into the salon?” He replied: “No problem! The walls will be built afterwards…” It was very impressive.
For the London Tavern, I followed the site from start to finish, then I went to the opening reception in early 1968. You really thought you were in London: there were several London taxis, Rolls-Royces, and there, on rue du Sabot, a machine producing English fog. It was incredible and magical!
Daniel Pulce then worked with other architects such as Gae Aulenti, Andrée Putman, Philippe Starck, Jean Nouvel, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Ronald Cecil Sportes, Patrick Bouchain, Anne Fourcade, etc.
For me, Slavik stands head and shoulders above the rest, and I realize how lucky I was to start working with him. I do not understand why people do not talk about him more, unlike so many others. He really was a great one. He taught me a tremendous amount. It is incredible to see all the places he created in Paris. A true virtuoso!
Unlike the others, he gave the impression of improvising, which of course was not the case at all. Everything was in his head. For many decorators, technique was a problem and everything had to be hidden, tucked away. For example, at Orsay, Gae Aulenti wanted to hide and conceal everything: the
coffee machines, the Coca dispensers, etc. It was also the case with Cecil Sportes at the Tour Montparnasse, who wanted nothing to be visible. Perhaps they had a certain sense of business.
For example, the seats at the Musée d’Orsay were made in Italy, and you absolutely had to go through Gae Aulenti to replace them… With Buren, the stripes had to be aligned everywhere from floor to ceiling, but also on the plates. But after two weeks, it was already no longer working! Slavik was not too demanding about the technical side.
That’s it. This book brought back so many memories… I realize even more today how he possessed a fairly universal culture, which perhaps explained his apparent calm…
