Furniture Shopping in Geneva: Collection Privée

The last thing a visitor to Geneva — city of luxury watches and United Nations pronouncements — expects to find is a tucked-away shop with an eccentric collection of vintage industrial-design furnishings and midcentury modern gems.

But that’s exactly what Jackie Occelli-Oberli has created at Collection Privée. Just blocks from the commercial area around Cornavin, the city’s main train station, is the almost-secret Place Grenus, and there, for the last four years, Ms. Occelli-Oberli has sold the sought-after work of the Scandinavian designers Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto — like Mr. Jacobsen’s chair, below — alongside Danish sideboards and desks.
Recent items included a 1960s Danish teak dining table with six chairs for 1,500 Swiss francs ($1,200 at 1.27 Swiss francs to $1) and a beautifully restored Art Deco leather armchair for 2,500 francs ($2,000). Her stock is increasingly devoted to “mobilier industriel” –work tables, shelving units and safes rescued from closing factories (some items date from the ’70s and ’80s but already look like objects from a bygone era).
Like an obsessive cat lady rehabilitating strays found on the street, Ms. Occelli-Oberli, spry and plain-spoken, combs through cast-off industrial detritus, looking for the likely specimens that can be cleaned up and patinated. The pieces come from Holland, Germany, Belgium, Spain — but not Switzerland. “This is a little country, and the industry — watchmaking — was little, so there was not much of this sort of thing,” she explains.
Born in St.-Tropez, Ms. Occelli-Oberli is the granddaughter of a painter whom she credits with opening her eyes to the visual world. When she moved to staid Geneva, she decided to open a shop and was determined that the location be in a neighborhood where people worked. This way they could stop by and browse on their way to or from lunch at places like the nearby Alliance Gourmande, which serves plates of tortilla (the potato and onion cake that is a tapas mainstay) and more elaborate meals; La Belle Epoque, a great stop for a beer or coffee; and tiny Amaretto, with a selection of bruschetta and salads.
Collection Privée, 8, place de Grenus, Geneva, Switzerland; (41-22) 738-7569.
Source: Christophe Margot New York Times