Pierre-Emile Legrain was a French decorator, bookbinder, illustrator and cabinetmaker.
From 1901 to 1907, he studied drawing at the Germain Pilon school, where he was a pupil of Robert Delaunay and Robert Bonfils. In 1908, Legrain met Paul Iribe, thanks to his drawings for the weekly Le Témoin. From 1915 onwards, he contributed to "La Baïonnette" with a number of drawings that prefigured Art Deco.
In 1919, he married and moved to rue du Val-de-Grâce. Called in to create bookbindings, he helped furnish the Avenue du Bois apartment of couturier Jacques Doucet, becoming his principal decorator after Paul Iribe's departure for the United States in 1914, and then, after 1925, his private mansion in Neuilly. His furniture and seating evoke Black African objects, such as curule chairs, also found in the first phase of Eilen Gray's furnishing of Suzanne Talbot's apartment on rue de Lota in Paris, between 1919 and 1921. Massive and sturdy, they are carved from exotic woods such as ebony and palm, and complemented by unusual materials such as leather, parchment, waxed canvas, mother-of-pearl, glass and metal.
In 1920, he was introduced to Madame Tachard by Doucet, for whom he decorated two apartments in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, followed by the famous villa at La Celle Saint Cloud. In 1921, at the Salon des artistes décorateurs, he exhibited a red and black dressing table in the shape of an "inverted omega", designed for Louis Vuitton, heralding the use of simpler, more geometric forms. In 1922, he set up his studio at 7 rue d'Argenteuil, near the Louvre, and remarried Marie Franco. He then furnished several villas and apartments, including those of Robert De Rothschild and Princess Grace of Greece, as well as a bedroom for Viscount Charles de Noailles in Fontainebleau in 1923.
In 1924, he took part in a collective stand at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, devoted to "the reception and intimacy of a modern apartment", presented by Pierre Chareau, Eileen Gray, Ruhlmann and the great couturier Poiret, where he presented a workroom with, for the most part, furniture created for Doucet. At the XVIth salon des artistes décorateurs in 1926, he formed the Groupe des cinq with Pierre Chareau, Jean Puiforcat and Dominique, which opposed the classicism of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs.
In 1927-1929, he decorated the apartments of Pierre Meyer and Maurice Martin du Gard. In 1929, he designed the U.A.M logo and trained Mary Reynolds in the art of bookbinding, but died suddenly of a heart attack that same year. The following year, he was the subject of a retrospective at the first U.A.M. exhibition.