Polar Bear (furniture)
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The Polar Bear (in the original French Ours Polaire) is a sofa and armchair set designed by the French designer Jean Royère in the late 1940s. The design was made between 1947 and 1967.
The name given to the piece is due to the comparison with a polar bear's fur due to its white fuzzy velvet upholstering.[1]
A 2019 article in Town and Country magazine described the design of the sofa as "Elegantly rounded and incomparably cushy" and made from a "soft woolen velvet reminiscent of plush toy fabric". The magazine attributed the piece's success to Royère's ability to make "the minimalist pieces look almost structure-less, entirely covering the skeletons—created using traditional wood-bending techniques—in layers of synthetic foam". The Parisian dealer Patrick Seguin described the pieces as "emblematic of Royère's spirit of absolutely free creativity and reflect a true elegance without any kind of ostentation".[2]