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Jacques Adnet Art Deco Chrome Double Inkwell, France 1930s

Name: Jacques Adnet Art Deco Chrome Double Inkwell, France 1930s
Brand: Jacques Adnet
Price: 600 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

French designer Jacques Adnet (1901 - 1984) designed this elegant Art Deco modernist chromed metal heavy desk accessory. The piece features a minimalist geometric shape double inkwell with a lid and glass insert. There is no visible maker's mark. The inkwell is in good overall condition, with light surface scratches throughout. One glass inkwell is missing. One screw to the inkwell lid is missing. Measurements: 12.63 in wide (32 cm) x 6.32 in deep (16 cm) x 3.57 in high (9 cm). Note: similar pieces from the Adnet desk collection are visible in the book, "Jacques Adnet" by Alain-René Hardy and Gaelle Millet. Copyright 2009. Les Editions de l'Amateur. Check the last pictures for reference. Further reading: To understand Jacques Adnet's work, the wise collector needs to start with this primary information: Thus, the most reliable source of information, Jacques Adnet's own words, is regrettably lacking. Furthermore - it must be emphasized - Jacques Adnet's professional activity, even if it fascinated him, did not constitute an essential part of his life. Even if he was committed to it, decoration was only his profession, not his whole life, and unlike other fellow decorators, he deployed few means to extend his notoriety. The lack of documentation only increases the difficulty we experience in determining his intentions. There are, in fact, no or few archives, or more precisely, few of them have reached us. My father has not kept anything about the Compagnie des Arts Francais, nor concerning his work, regrets Francoise Adnet (his daughter). During the war, the decorator bought a second home in Yvelines (a French department around Paris.) He subsequently stored his archives in the attic: drawings, models, plans, and various documents. Unfortunately, this collection, which would have constituted a mine of irreplaceable information for researchers, was almost destroyed by bad weather. So much so that today, we can consider that most of the Compagnie des Arts Francais archives are irretrievably lost. Jacques Adnet certainly did not attach much importance to the past (and even less to posterity.) In this, he was far from exceptional. Historians of the decorative arts of this period never cease to regret this lack of concern for heritage characterizing most of the actors who, artists at the same time as traders, intervened at the time at the crossroads of creation and production; the attitude of the Parisian department stores is symptomatic in this regard, which has unethically, neglected the evidence of the activity of their art workshops, and the Galeries Lafayette Department Store, unfortunately for us, had no more discernment than Le Printemps Department Store, so much so that the beginnings of Jacques Adnet are no better documented than the work of his maturity, the archives of La Maitrise also being practically non-existent. These shortcomings have the consequence that the various assessments of the work of Jacques Adnet most often result from an interpretation of criticism, frequently leading to a typical incomprehension of his creations due to a lack of irrefutable writings. (Extract from the foreword of the book by Alain-René Hardy and Gaelle Millet on Jacques Adnet. Published in 2009 by Les Editions de l'Amateur).

Creator:

Jacques Adnet (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 3.57 in (9.07 cm)Width: 12.63 in (32.09 cm)Depth: 6.32 in (16.06 cm)

Style:

Art Deco (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Chrome,Glass,Metal

Place of Origin:

France

Period:

1930-1939

Date of Manufacture:

circa 1930

Condition:

Seller Location:

Atlanta, GA

Reference Number:

Seller: 8O034CEAFBB1stDibs: LU1632239677162

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Shop All Jacques Adnet

Jacques Adnet

One of the most elegant and innovative 20th-century French furniture designers, Jacques Adnet created a simple, unadorned signature style that is both trim and vigorous. He began his career in the heyday of the Art Deco era, and in the 1950s, in association with Hermès, created chairs, lamps, desks and other pieces that employed slender metal frames clad in stitched saddle leather. With such furnishings, Adnet brought a fashion sensibility to design and decor that had not been seen since the 1920s prime of the great Paris couturier-decorator Paul Poiret.

Adnet was born in a provincial town in Burgundy, where he studied design before moving, along with his twin brother, Jean, to Paris to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs. After their graduation in the early 1920s, the brothers were hired to work in the decorative-arts atelier of the department store Galeries Lafayette, under the direction of Maurice Dufrêne, an Art Deco master who developed a singularly robust and opulent style. Both Adnets showed their work at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes — the design fair from which the term Art Deco is derived.

In 1928, Jacques Adnet took charge of the struggling La Compagnie des Arts Français, a decorative-arts firm founded by Louis Süe and André Mare that created modern furnishings that bore traces of 18th-century styling. Adnet immediately took the company in a different direction. He developed a simple lithe and lean look that incorporated industrial materials such as metal and glass, along with exotic woods and finishes such as parchment and sharkskin.

Adnet’s furniture begs to be described in terms of personalities: charming faux-bamboo side tables, suave chrome lighting and urbane club chairs. His most noted pieces, which feature sleek metal frames wrapped in Hermès leather, have a character all their own — smooth, elegant and self-assured, they inhabit a room with the same wit and grace as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve.

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