The King of Sicily

The Norman Kings of Sicily hold a singular place in the history of Mediterranean Europe. In the twelfth century, they achieved something that had eluded every power before them: the peaceful coexistence of peoples who had long been opposed. They built a kingdom in the south of Italy and Sicily where Orthodox Byzantines, Muslim Arabs and Catholic Christians lived side by side — not merely in tolerance but in genuine exchange. From that meeting of worlds came a civilisation unlike any other: an architecture that fused Arabic geometry with Norman stone, mosaics that spoke Greek and Latin in the same breath, a court where scholars of three faiths translated the knowledge of antiquity together. From diversity, they made something richer than any single tradition could have produced alone.

RDS Gallery takes its name from the street in the Marais where it began in 2019, and that spirit of exchange runs through everything we offer. The objects in this gallery were made by artists and artisans who drew on the full breadth of human culture — a Viennese sculptor who studied the animals of Africa and Asia; Lalique who found his forms in Japanese nature prints and the myths of ancient Greece; the Daum brothers whose glass carried the flora of the Lorraine forests and the ornamental vocabulary of the Arab world. These were not isolated acts of creation. They were conversations across time and culture, each piece absorbing the influences that shaped it and carrying them forward to be brought together here.

The subjects matter too. Sappho by the sea. Salomé dancing for King Herod. A Cossack on horseback. A pre-Columbian vessel from a civilisation two thousand years gone. A Joan of Arc bust with a superb marble veining reminiscent of her sad fate. Each one arrives bearing its mythology — the stories, beliefs and ways of seeing that moved the hand that made it and shaped the stories humanity has carried across the ages. Taken together, they form a tapestry woven from the richness of human diversity.

We hope you find and gift the pieces that can help shape your design narrative and accompany you and your close ones.