Designed in Paris, made to order in the Emirates. For clients on Saadiyat, Al Reem, Yas and Al Raha, the fabric travels first and the piece follows.
WhatsApp the studioOrdering upholstery from another emirate usually means guessing. A fabric is chosen from a photograph on a phone, the piece arrives, and the colour is not the colour. Saint Objets runs the sequence in the other order. The cutting of BOHEME, reference F3978002, colourway QUARTZ, leaves the studio first and is looked at in your own room, on Saadiyat or on Reem, at the hour you actually sit in it. Only then is the frame specified, the fabric metered and the price given. Sarah Koben, Founder and Creative Director, reads every Abu Dhabi file herself before it goes to the atelier.
Saint Objets makes furniture upholstered in Pierre Frey for Abu Dhabi. We have no showroom in the emirate. Cuttings of BOHEME, reference F3978002, colourway QUARTZ, are couriered to Saadiyat, Al Reem or Yas, the piece is specified by video call, made to order in ten to thirty days, and delivered to your address. Price on request.
The fabric is ordered from the house in Paris. The frames are our own.
Pierre Frey has edited fabric in Paris since 1935, and owns Braquenié, Le Manach, Fadini Borghi, Boussac and Thorp of London. Saint Objets builds the frame, cuts the fabric to the match and delivers it finished.
Tell us the building, the room and the window it faces. We will send the BOHEME cuttings to your Abu Dhabi address, put a call in the diary, and only quote once the cut plan is drawn. Nothing is decided from a photograph.
Request a sampleSaint Objets has no showroom in Abu Dhabi, and the page you are reading will not pretend otherwise. The two places where a piece can be sat in are both in Dubai: Decoroom at Art of Living Mall, where you can walk in and the design consultation is complimentary, and the studio at Dubai Design District, by appointment. What we have built instead, for the clients who write to us from Saadiyat, Al Reem, Yas and Al Bateen, is a way of ordering that does not depend on the drive. The fabric comes to you, the specification is agreed on a call, and the finished piece is delivered to the address. The only thing you lose by living in the capital is the ability to change your mind while standing in front of the chair, and we solve that by sending the cutting before anything is committed.
The fabric in question is BOHEME by Pierre Frey, reference F3978002, colourway QUARTZ. It is a ciselé cotton velvet, which means the pattern is not printed onto the surface but cut into the pile, so the wave exists as a difference in height rather than a difference in ink. The composition is 73% cotton and 27% viscose, with a pile of 100% cotton. The fabric is 138 cm wide and weighs 1242 g per linear metre. Those are the manufacturer's published figures, taken from the supplier card and from pierrefrey.com, and they are the only fabric figures we will print. When an Abu Dhabi client asks us for a fade rating or a stain claim, the honest answer is that we do not have one documented, so we do not give one.
The number that matters most to a quote is the repeat. BOHEME is a straight repeat, vertical 43 cm and horizontal 34 cm. On a plain velvet an upholsterer cuts panels wherever they fall on the roll. On a 43 cm repeat every visible panel has to be positioned so the wave continues across the join, which means the cutter is placing panels against the pattern rather than against the edge of the fabric, and the offcut between them is unusable. This is the whole reason L'Écrin in Pierre Frey is price on request rather than carrying a fixed figure the way a plain fabric can. We do not publish a metre count, because the count belongs to your specific cut plan and to no other chair.
There is a whole layer of local writing that tells an Emirates buyer to avoid cotton and velvet altogether, on the grounds of humidity, dust and sun. It deserves a straight answer rather than a dodge, particularly for the sea facing apartments on Saadiyat and Reem where the light comes off the water for most of the day. BOHEME is an indoor fabric and we specify it as one. The pile is dense and cut, which is why the manufacturer rates it at 85,000 Martindale cycles for intensive upholstery. It also carries the BS 5852 cigarette and match test. What we advise, on placement, is to keep the piece out of direct sun, the same advice we would give for any cut pile anywhere.
The consultation for an Abu Dhabi client is a real working session, not a courtesy call. Before it we ask for photographs of the room at three moments of the day, because the QUARTZ colourway lifts under warm evening light and settles under the flat white light of a midday tower window. We ask for the wall dimension the piece will sit against, and we ask what you are currently sitting on and how high its seat is, since almost every complaint about a new armchair is really a complaint about a change of seat height. On the call we hold the same cutting you are holding, and we decide together which way the wave runs.
L'Écrin is a club armchair on a solid wood plinth, with a spring seat fitted as standard. The plinth is not a decorative base, it is what keeps the frame off a floor and keeps the line low and closed rather than perched on legs. The spring seat is fitted as standard because a memory feel foam alone goes soft in a piece that is sat in every evening. In Pierre Frey the chair is offered in BOHEME QUARTZ, and the same reference is also woven in Fluorite 003 and Agate 004, which we can send as a set of three cuttings if you want to see the range in the room before choosing.
If you already own a piece you love, or you have bought a length of Pierre Frey yourself, the studio will work with customer's own material. This is a common Abu Dhabi situation, since a length is often bought in Paris or London and then waits in a cupboard in Al Reem for a year before anyone cuts it. We assess the frame first, and we say honestly whether it is worth recovering, because a tired frame under an expensive fabric is money spent twice. If the frame is sound, we plan the cut against your metreage before we touch it, and we tell you if there is not enough fabric for the repeat.
On timing, production is ten to thirty days once the fabric is in the atelier, and that window starts when the fabric arrives, not when you place the order. We say this plainly to Abu Dhabi clients because the transport of the fabric from Paris sits ahead of it and is not ours to promise. Delivery and assembly are complimentary within Dubai on orders above AED 4,000. To an Abu Dhabi address, the studio arranges the delivery and quotes the transport with the piece, so the figure is visible before you commit rather than appearing at the end. Nothing is left to a courier who does not know what is in the box.
If you would rather see the fabric on a finished piece before ordering, the drive is one morning and it is worth it. Decoroom at Art of Living Mall is a walk in, with a complimentary design consultation and no appointment needed, and the Dubai Design District studio is by appointment when you want a longer, quieter session with the fabric library. Tell us you are coming from Abu Dhabi and we will have the BOHEME cuttings and the plain velvet edition of L'Écrin out on the floor for the same visit, so that one trip settles both the fabric and the frame rather than two.
Written by the Saint Objets studio. Message the studio on WhatsApp or see the Pierre Frey collection.
No. Saint Objets has two showrooms, both in Dubai: Decoroom at Art of Living Mall, where you can walk in and the design consultation is complimentary, and the studio at Dubai Design District, by appointment. For clients in the capital we work by sending fabric cuttings to your address and running the consultation by video call, then delivering the finished piece to Abu Dhabi.
Yes. We hold cuttings of BOHEME, reference F3978002, in the studio and send them to Abu Dhabi addresses. We suggest you look at the cutting in the actual room at two different hours, because BOHEME is a ciselé velvet and the wave is cut into the pile, so the pattern changes with the angle of the light and a photograph flattens it entirely.
Because BOHEME has a straight repeat of 43 cm vertically and 34 cm horizontally, on a fabric 138 cm wide. Every panel of the chair has to be cut so the wave continues across the joins, and the metreage that takes depends on the cut plan for your specific piece. The atelier draws the plan, counts the linear metres, and the price is sent with the metreage beside it.
We deliver across the Emirates. Delivery and assembly are complimentary within Dubai on orders above AED 4,000. For an Abu Dhabi address the studio arranges the delivery and quotes the transport together with the piece, so you see the figure before committing. For towers on Reem, Saadiyat and Al Raha, please give us the building management contact early so a delivery window and service lift can be booked.
Production is ten to thirty days once the fabric is in the atelier, and the delivery to Abu Dhabi is scheduled at the end of that window. The clock starts when the fabric arrives with us, not when you place the order, because the fabric is ordered from the house in Paris and that leg is not ours to promise. We tell you the date the fabric lands.
BOHEME is an indoor fabric and we specify it as one. The manufacturer rates it at 85,000 Martindale cycles for intensive upholstery, and it carries the BS 5852 cigarette and match test. Our placement advice is to keep it out of direct sun. We do not publish a fade rating or a stain claim for it, because none is documented.
Yes, we work with customer's own material. The frame is assessed first, and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth recovering, because good fabric on a tired frame is money spent twice. We then plan the cut against your metreage before starting, and we will tell you in advance if there is not enough fabric to carry the repeat across every panel.
The reference F3978002 is offered in QUARTZ, which is the colourway of the first L'Écrin edition, and the same design is also woven in Fluorite 003 and Agate 004. We can send all three cuttings together to an Abu Dhabi address so you can compare them in your own room rather than on a screen, which is the only way the relief of a ciselé velvet reads properly.