Puces Portrait : Albert & Roxane Rodriguez
In his cavernous Puces warehouse, Albert Rodriguez pours a lifetime of expertise and passion into a profusion of nineteenth-century furniture, chandeliers and objets d’art.
Albert Rodriguez is one of the great figures of the Puces de Saint-Ouen. Active since the early 1970s, he has watched fashions cycle endlessly, with the steady eye of the old guard. A generalist and a specialist of the nineteenth century, he is a compulsive buyer who works from a cavernous former factory, its vast rooms densely packed with furniture, chandeliers, marble mantelpieces, boiseries, objets d’art, and whatever else takes his fancy. A tireless defender of the Puces, he has fought to protect its future, while his daughter Roxane – a decorator and true child of the market – has played a key role in renewing contemporary taste for nineteenth-century design.
This edited interview is taken from The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), a book that draws back the curtain on this remarkable place through encounters with a handful of the dealers at its heart.
