Château de Versailles is visited by eight million people every year, marvelling at gilded ceilings, ornate furniture and sumptuous fabrics. On a recent winter day, several were taking a break, seated on benches near the 1772 staircase by Ange-Jacques Gabriel and below the 2013 looping crystal chandelier by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. You would forgive them for not noticing that the benches underneath their bottoms were also worthy of a closer look.
Tectona for Château de Versailles
Versailles is now home to about 25 “Grande Écurie” benches designed especially for the Château by the 47-year-old French outdoor furniture company Tectona. Traditionally, the visitors’ benches at Versailles were in the rounded style of Louis Philippe, and covered with thick velvet-covered cushions that suffered under the assault of so many rear ends. A few years ago, the Château’s president, Catherine Pégard, reached out to Tectona’s owner, Arnaud Brunel.
Tectona knows a thing or two about tired tourists. The company’s teak Glenwood bench has been a staple in the gardens of the Musée Rodin for some 40 years. The Glenwood has also graced the French gardens at the Vaux-le-Vicomte château for more than three decades, and more recently took up residence in the gardens of the Château de Chambord.
In 2017, Tectona produced the “Muse” bench, based on a contest-winning design by Isabelle Baudraz (who was still only a student), for the Musée Picasso. Three years later, veteran French designer Pierre Charpin’s oak bench, inspired by a railroad track, was selected for the new Plateforme 10 cultural space in Lausanne. And in 2022, architects Shigeru Ban et Jean de Gastines chose a range of Tectona furniture for the landscape designer Gilles Clement’s new garden at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Currently, the company is creating furniture for the French pavilion at the 2025 Universal Exposition in Osaka.
When Pégard requested a bench for Versailles, Brunel asked to visit the Château’s furniture storehouse, located above the former stables. He was accompanied by Tectona’s in-house sculptor, Jean-Yves Grandfils, a “Meilleur Ouvrier de France” who also renovates historic monuments and cathedrals.
In the hodgepodge of old royal chairs and tables, the two noticed a couple of neoclassical benches by the 18th-century royal carpenter Georges Jacob. One had been in the Château de Saint-Cloud stables and was moved to Versailles before 1855. The other started at Versailles’ Petites Écuries (small stables), moved to the Garde-Meuble Royal (where furniture from the royal palaces was stored), then came back to the Château de Versailles during the Second Republic.
Grandfils replicated both without their padded seats in Tectona’s Normandy workshop. The latter of the two was then chosen as the model for the new bench, due to its alluring legs that tapered slightly before flaring at the bottom. 'Our redesign allowed Versailles to have a bench without fabric,' says Brunel. 'As fabric generally gets destroyed every six months by so many visitors.'
Aesthetically, the bench is sophisticated and timeless, with simple lines handcrafted in oak, then varnished a shade of honey that fits in perfectly with the cream-coloured stone of the Gabriel staircase. Versailles’ head of protocol, Dominique Avart, says it has an 'elegance, solidity, sobriety that is perfect for this site.'
Private customers can purchase Tectona’s Grande Ecurie bench for their homes, in the highest quality imperial teak for outdoors, or in oak (by special order) for indoors. Who needs a throne when you can have a Versailles bench?
