This is the Madrilenian store that claimed 'art deco' in the nineties and furnished films by Almodóvar, Ana Belén and even Tom Cruise

For Spanish antique dealers in the late 1980s, the 20th century was not old enough or interesting enough to herd a coat of shellac and sell it in their stores.

In a city like Madrid, one could find Second Empire secretaries, Victorian trash cans, Chinese vases, or perhaps an Elizabethan kneeler, but getting

tables

or Gio Ponti armchairs was a practically impossible mission.

Inaugurated in 1988 a step away from the Royal Palace,

(Arrieta Street, 17) claims to be the first antique store to allow such a thing.

The idea came from Carmen Palacios, at that time a nurse in love with the elegant design of the twenties and thirties.

"The

It had become fashionable again in the sixties, but since almost no one sold it in Spain, I was a little scared to open a store specializing in that style.

However, we were successful from the get-go.

Then we started selling furniture from the fifties.

In that we were also pioneers".

Architects, designers "and married couples of liberal professionals," adds Palacios, were the first clients to cross that door between the center of Madrid and Jean Perzel's Paris or Alvar Aalto's Helsinki, which is Modern Times.

Also the Almodóvar girls, who in those same years had begun to exchange their crocheted rugs and

amber

glasses

for BD designs and Fornasetti trays: Modern Times furniture

Marisa Paredes company in

.

“We have rented furniture for many films:

, by Ana Belén;

… Also for that madness that Tom Cruise filmed in Seville.

What was it called?

[refers to the movie

(2010)] ”.

Today, Modern Times is a team of restorers and antique experts headed by Palacios herself and her partner, the Portuguese Bento Figueira.

In addition to furniture from the last century, the store sells the work of contemporary artisans such as Andrés Gallardo or Natalia Lumbreras and functions as an art gallery.

These days, he participates with three exhibitions at the

: one with

;

another of

;

and In

, a tour of pieces of furniture from the previous century such as the Parabola chair, designed by the architect Luis M. Feduchi in 1953. But the best thing is still to go to the store to take a look at the

novelties

.

For Carmen Palacios, this is the last great design style.

“Something remarkable about

is that, being a very defined style, it used very varied references: ancient Greece, the avant-gardes, African art, the Orient… That is very difficult to achieve.

Then there was a great interest in the quality and richness of the materials.

Lining a piece of furniture with

(or shark skin) today is almost unimaginable ”.

The founder of Tiempos Modernos recalls other economic crises, such as the one of 1993, which already caused her clients to have to think very well before scratching their pockets to take a Jules Leleu bar cabinet home.

To this problem is now added the difficulty of finding the furniture itself.

The closure of borders and the cancellations of antiques fairs in Europe have forced them to pull out of storage to keep the store's catalog, mainly nurtured by finds from France, Belgium or England, in the case of

, or Denmark. , Italy and the Nordic countries, in the

.

In Spain, finding

furniture

as precious as that rosewood and ivory table by Ruhlmann from which Palacios almost found it difficult to discard is as exceptional as witnessing a Marian apparition.

“Unlike what happens with architecture, the

furniture

that was made in Spain did not have much quality.

The few people who could afford it used to order it outside.

An example is the bathroom in the Liria palace that Rateau designed for the father of the Duchess of Alba ”, he explains.

The old Alba bathroom is also a good example to understand how successful the opening of Modern Times was in 1988. The more than six million euros that Christie's obtained in 2013 by auctioning the Carrara marble bathtub, the leopard lounger and other furniture in that room confirm the good shape of

, an almost centennial style that neither the Great Depression nor the Second World War took away its shine.

It will be that, as Carmen Palacios says, beauty and well done always combine.