We take a look at the designers behind some of the key pieces which were recently sold in the Design For Living auction on 6 December.
Jean Perzel (1892-1986) created the design for this chrome and white glass lamp in 1927-28 (Art Deco style chrome and white glass lamp, sold for £2,750) and it was subsequently used by significant architects and decorators of the era, namely Jacques Emile Ruhlmann, Jules Emile Leleu and Corbusier. Its four stepped cylinders of ultra-white enamelled optical glass are pure Art Deco in their styling and aesthetics. Perzel established his company at the height of the revered and chicest of design movements, and his lighting and furniture in glass and bronze were commissioned for Royal residences and private households. The firm of Jean Perzel identifies this model of lamp as the most iconic of their early 20th century designs and its exceptionally powerful light can alone illuminate a whole room.
Jacques Adnet’s life (1900-1984) kept pace with the 20th century, its exciting design and cultural developments and its tragic events too. He trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and exhibited at the seminal 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes; a key focus was furniture and he pioneered the integration of metal and glass into its structure and decoration. In 1928 Adnet took the helm at the troubled La Compagnie des Arts Français, the decorative arts firm whose output had hitherto been heavily influenced by 18th century designs. Adnet developed a lean, industrial look employing metal, glass, exotic woods and finishes, and this tantalus with its gleaming, geometric lines and Baccarat’s crystal decanters is a wonderful example of a modernist object (Jacques Adnet and Baccarat, Art Deco electroplated and glass tantalus with three shaped decanters, sold for £1,875).
Aristide Colotte (1885-1959) was born in Baccarat, the city whose economy depended solely on the crystal industry, both his father and uncle were glass makers, and in 1902 he was hired as an apprentice engraver. He made an important connection at the 1909 Exposition Internationale de l’Est de la France – held to demonstrate the recovery of the region after the 1870 Alsace-Lorraine annexation – which hosted over 2,000 exhibitors and received 2 million visitors. The local École de Nancy, a group of Art Nouveau artisans, had its own pavilion at the Exposition and on the Baccarat stand Colotte was introduced to its principal, Eugène Corbin, who offered him a crystal and metal engraving workshop within the École’s premises. Colotte honed his distinctive geometric designs in glass in the years after the first World War, in 1924 he took on larger premises, and a year later exhibited at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale, where he won a bronze medal for his jewellery. He made the unfortunate decision to support Marshall Pétain, head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, during World War II. The crystal sword made for Pétain was understandably contentious and Colotte had to flee for his own safety to Germany. He was effectively ostracised by his artist and maker peers on his return to Nancy in 1945, in 1950 he opened a small workshop and store in Paris and in 1957 he exhibited at the Salon, but by this time he was seriously ill and he passed away in 1959. Given the distraction of his circumstances and allegiances, Colotte’s output was not extensive, (Aristide Colotte (1885-1959), ‘Tireur à L’Arc’, 1930; etched, frosted and polished glass vase with lug handles, decorated with the stylised upper torso of a man, sold for £4,750).
Jan and Joël Martel (1896-1966), French sculptors and identical twin brothers, were among the founding members of the influential Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM), they produced ornamental sculptures, statues, monuments and fountains during the years of Art Deco and Cubism. Their works were simply co-signed Martel and they worked from the same workshop. The brothers participated in numerous Paris exhibitions, including the 1925 Exposition Internationale, and in 1932 they created a monument to Claude Debussy for the boulevard Lannes, Paris. They were selected to design a monument to honour Le Marechal Leclerc, in Antony, some months before the end of the second World War; the war hero appears in front of a screen depicting the progress of the military from 1941 until the victorious entry into Paris, (Jan and Joël Martel (1896-1966), Art Deco green bronzed figure of a soldier, sold for £5,625).
Max Le Verrier (1891-1973) created decorative objects, often as here, in bronze, as well as historical sculptures (Max Le Verrier (1891-1973), Art Deco bronze model of a stalking panther, ‘Baghera’, sold for £2,500). The son of a French jeweller and goldsmith his father propelled him towards a career in farming, despite Le Verrier’s passion for and skill in drawing and sculpture evident from his earliest years. Effectively by the age of 16 Le Verrier was fending for himself having become ostracised from his father. He had an extremely colourful and adventurous time during World War I, and spent three years in a German prison, but in 1917 he was placed in an interment camp in Switzerland, and was later able to study at the Beaux Arts school, Geneva, where he was finally in a position to train and make friends with like minded artists, sculptors and draughtsmen. On his return to Paris he worked from Rue du Théâtre where his first major piece, Pelican, was created in 1919. He was inspired by animals in zoos and circuses, along with panthers, he sculpted horses, lions, chimpanzees, storks and squirrels. In 1928 he created Clarte, the woman with the illuminated ball, the work requiring three models, it as the Art Deco version of the antique goddess of light, with a boyish haircut and lithe physique. Le Verrier escaped to Gers, southern France, during the second World War and opened up his home there to war victims, he returned to Paris in 1944 to find that his studio, apartment and workshop had been ransacked. However, he soon built back his business and carried on working up until very shortly before his death in 1973.
In his own words Loredano Rosin (1936-1992) said, ‘I am a member of the last generation of Murano glass masters who were trained in the ancient artisan tradition. For better or worse, we were not free to chose a profession’, (Loredano Rosin (1936-1992), Murano glass sculpture of a nude kneeling female figure, sold for £1,125).
From a boy Rosin worked in glass, ‘when I was only twelve I was already working ten hours a day’. He wasn’t taken with glass blowing, preferring instead to work and shape glass in the form of a solid mass, and at the time of becoming maestro demand was strong for solid table top pieces. In 1965 he became involved with Fucina Degli Angeli, the co-operative founded in 1950 with the aim of promoting the artistic possibilities of glass to painters, where he realised Picasso’s ‘Nymphs and Fauns’ in glass. Rosin relished the challenge of discovering new techniques in order to interpret works originally created in two dimensions.
However, he stated, ‘My preference is for the figurative which I feel gives me the greatest scope to depict human kind and human sentiments…It seems that the glass itself wants me to shape it…to dominate it with both mental and physical force until we unite in creating the extensions of my will’.
Rosin exhibited his works extensively in solo and group shows in Europe, Japan and North America. Tragically he died in the Venice lagoon as a result of injuries he sustained in a collision between his water scooter and a mooring post.
Dan Dailey’s ‘Le Joyau’ dates from 1994, as he describes this work it is ‘…a deliberate play upon the crystal jewel that the woman is wearing and the jewel that she is…the hair is following the pattern established by previous pate-de-verre pieces for Daum with its allusions to Art Deco.’
Born in 1947, Dailey has produced sculpture and functional art with an emphasis on lighting since 1970, he works mostly in glass and metal and each work starts out as a drawing. His themes include human character and the worlds they inhabit. His commissioned work is to be found in over 70 international buildings and institutions, and in the collections of over 50 museums and public collections.
Daum was founded in 1878 by Jean Daum, a lawyer, who took over the glassworks near Nancy, France, as part payment for an outstanding debt. His son, Auguste, also a lawyer, joined the business soon after. Daum originally specialised in glass for windows and for taverns but moved into tableware and in 1889 exhibited at the Paris exhibition. In 1970 Daum reintroduced the pâte-de-verre technique, known since ancient times it was developed to a high artistic level during the Art Nouveau period particularly by Emile Galle, Gabriel-Argy Rousseau and Georges Despret. The process is slow, requiring a great degree of skill to avoid bubbles, cloudiness and cracking during the cooling process after the glass paste has been fired within its mould.
At the invitation of Jacques Daum, Dailey has worked as an independent designer at Cristallerie Daum since 1976. He started by creating experimental models for pâte- de-verre castings, most of which were figurative. He was encouraged to find pieces by Jean-Michel Folon, César, Salvador Dalí and many other artists developed with careful attention paid to the artists’ original drawings and models. Daum is unique in the glass industry in having collaborated with some 100 or so artists in the production of pâte-de-verre glass sculptures. Furthermore, Daum does not impose styles or concepts on its artists, rather it celebrates the resulting diversity in the objects produced. As Dailey says, ‘I only wish I had the time to do even more works with Daum because the potential is vast’.
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