Art Deco Tantalus by Jaques Adnet

Name: Art Deco Tantalus by Jaques Adnet
Brand: Jacques Adnet
Price: 4283.98 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Chromium Plated Circa 1930 From our Tantalus collection, we are delighted to offer this Jacques Adnet Art Deco Tantalus. The Tantalus houses three square-cut crystal glass decanters with faceted stoppers within a Chromium plated tubular design with twin carry handles and overhanging T-bar design with a padlock. When unlocked the T bar lifts and then swings across to allow access to the decanters. The Tantalus comes complete with working lock and tasselled key. Jacques Adnet (1900-1984) was a leading French Art Deco modernist designer, architect and interior designer. He believed in the functional aspect of furniture combined with geometrical simplicity. Jacques Adnet was inspired by pre-classical styles and was well acquainted with traditional furniture. Tantalus, the origin traces back to the 19th century in England when a German born cabinetmaker George Betjemann patented the Tantalus model in 1881 (UK Patent 58948). Betjemann & Sons had workshops at 34–42 Pentonville Road, London from the 1830s specialising in high quality Boxes for various uses and Decanter sets including the Tantalus. The name ‘Tantalus’ is a reference to the unsatisfied temptations of the Greek mythological character Tantalus, son of Zeus. It is told that he was trapped in Tartarus, made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low hanging branches. The fruit would forever elude his grasp and the pool would recede before he was able to quench his thirst. The story is in reference to the lockable aspect of the Tantalus eluding anyone trying to access the decanters without the key. Art Deco was a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first appeared in France in the 1910s. It flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. It was hugely prevalent through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects and even influenced fashion and jewellery. Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings, ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners. It has become extremely popular today and is highly desirable to collectors and trendsetters in the fashion industry. Measurements (centimetre) 23cm High x 35cm Wide x 11cm Deep

Creator:

Jacques Adnet (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 9 in (22.86 cm)Width: 13.8 in (35.06 cm)Depth: 4.3 in (10.93 cm)

Style:

Art Deco (In the Style Of)

Materials and Techniques:

Chrome,Glass

Place of Origin:

France

Period:

Early 20th Century

Date of Manufacture:

circa 1930

Condition:

Seller Location:

Northampton, GB

Reference Number:

Seller: 5002391stDibs: LU8027232556952

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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, urbane club chairs. His most noted pieces — 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.