The ‘Marie Antoinette' chairs that fooled France's finest auctioneers in €4.5m scam

Telegraph

25-03-2025

A flamboyant French art expert and 'master forger' fooled the Palace at Versailles into buying fake 'Marie Antoinette' chairs, a court heard on Tuesday.
Bill Pallot, an expert on 18th-century French furniture, is accused of running a counterfeit operation between 2008 and 2015 as part of a €4.5 million scam that one leading gallery owner dubbed 'catastrophic' for the prestige of Gallic art dealing.
With his distinctive long hair, round glasses and three-piece suits, the 61-year-old was a familiar figure in France due to his regular publications and media appearances. The kingpin of pre-Revolutionary furniture was nicknamed 'Père la chaise' – a play on Paris's Père-Lachaise cemetery and the phrase 'father of the chair'.
On Tuesday, a court in Pontoise outside Paris accused him and his fellow defendant Bruno Desnoues, a prominent woodcarver, of producing and selling chairs from 2007 to 2008 that they claimed were historic pieces that had adorned the salons of the likes of Madame du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV, and Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI's wife and the last queen of France.
In fact, the pair have admitted they were all 'perfect' fakes, made from the frames of old chairs that were upholstered with gold and other intricate ornamentation of the time.
Few questions were asked as Mr Pallot was a leading authority, having written 'the bible' on such royal furniture called The art of chairs in the 18th century. His accomplice's credentials were equally impeccable, as he had earned the label 'best craftsman in France'.
So fine were the fakes that they were given the official stamp of authenticity by the Palace at Versailles, built for 'Sun King' Louis XVI, but also a string of top auction houses, including Sotheby's and Drouot. Some were even classified 'national treasures'.
The scandal was a huge embarrassment for Versailles when it erupted in 2016. An ensuing government audit of its acquisitions policy found serious 'failings' in Versailles's system of checks into authenticity and provenance, which has since been given a radical overhaul.
So accomplished were the fraudsters that they were not caught due to stylistic mistakes – in the end, it was money that gave the game away.
In 2014, tax inspectors were curious as to how a Portuguese couple living in a modest bungalow in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles – who worked as a chauffeur for an antiques dealer and hairdresser – had managed to buy up property worth €1.2 million and were looking to buy a second house in the area for cash.
They swiftly ascertained that the money was laundered and linked the funds to a Swiss account belonging to Mr Desnoue, who explained that he had opened it at Mr Pallot's request to receive commissions.
The two men quickly admitted that they had forged the chairs from scratch. The first pair they made were said to have come from Madame du Barry's drawing room. They were sold to Versailles by the Kraemer gallery for €840,000.
Two chairs supposedly belonging to Marie Antoinette for the Belvedere pavilion were also complete forgeries. They had been bought for €200,000 by the Kraemer gallery, which sold them for €2 million to a Qatari prince. When doubts later arose about their authenticity, the gallery took them back. In the meantime, however, they had been classified as national treasures.
Sotheby's sold another 18th-century chair made by the pair to Versailles, also a fake; the supposed 'bergère' chair belonging to Madame Elisabeth, Louis XVI's sister, sold for €250,000.
Money appears to be the main motive. The woodcarver, who described himself as 'first and foremost an artist', said he had been driven to forgery due to financial difficulties.
Mr Pallot said the pair made the first lot of two identical fake chairs as a 'funny bet' to 'see if we could pull it off'.
'They went through without a hitch,' he said. 'The four following lots were for money,' he told Le Parisien.
The affair sent shock waves through the world of antiques dealers and galleries, particularly as the prestigious Kraemer gallery in Paris and Laurent Kraemer, its managing director, are among the defendants.
Kraemer, which is accused of 'failing to conduct sufficient checks', denies any wrongdoing and contends it too is a victim of the master forgers.
'These chairs were declared national treasures. They were put on the market and validated by the best specialists of the time,' said Martin Reynaud and Mauricia Courrégé, the gallery's lawyers, before the court hearing.
'The entire art market chain was taken in by the counterfeiters.'