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Lot Essay
CROSS-CULTURAL ABSTRACTION
by Philippe Garner
This splendid five-panel lacquer screen tells of a glorious period in the story of the decorative arts in France. In the years following the First World War, an inspired generation of Parisian designers and their skilled workers made their mark in the design of furniture and furnishings characterised by a new spirit of modernity and by their execution to the very highest standards in the most refined of materials. Lustrous Japanese lacquers were to enjoy a particular appreciation in these years, most visibly in the work of Jean Dunand, whose striking geometric and stylised natural and figurative motifs made his reputation at the 1925 Exposition Internationale.
The present screen, however, is quite distinct from the work of Dunand. In its colours and techniques, and in the simple but subtly effective motifs – floating, angular shapes that shift according to the angle of articulation and the viewer’s movements – this screen has closer affinities with the work of the other major designer associated with this medium, Eileen Gray. Indeed, the screen had been attributed to her when it first resurfaced in Paris some forty years ago in the collection of Jean-Claude Brugnot (who had acquired documented works by Gray from the estate of her client Georgette Labourdette) and when it appeared at auction in New York in 1989. The screen’s precise provenance before Brugnot is not known and its authorship remains an enigma. The screen’s deep rich brown surfaces, and their counterpoint in the variegated sandy and earthen tints of the motifs and in the textured two-tone ‘laque arrachée’ of the reverse compare closely with specific works by Gray. We are reminded, for example, of the base colour of the brown lacquer screen with incised decoration published in Wendingen in 1924, and of the similar association of dark brown lacquer and two-tone ‘laque arrachée’ of a documented bowl and cover (Philippe Garner, Eileen Gray Designer and Architect, 1993, p. 19). Perhaps the link is the Japanese master Seizô Sougawara, whose virtuosity was crucial in the development of the artisanship required to bring lacquer to the fore in Paris in the Twenties. It was Sougawara who taught Dunand and the talented though less well known Katsu Hamanaka, and who was the close collaborator of Eileen Gray.
There is surely more to be discovered about the connections between these and other artists, artisans, and ateliers involved in the fashion for fine lacquer. While we may not be able to confirm its authorship, this screen asserts its authority on its own terms, for its exceptional craftsmanship and as a sophisticated manifestation of the creative spirit of its time and place.
– Philippe Garner, author of Eileen Gray: Design and Architecture, 1878-1976, Cologne, 1993
by Philippe Garner
This splendid five-panel lacquer screen tells of a glorious period in the story of the decorative arts in France. In the years following the First World War, an inspired generation of Parisian designers and their skilled workers made their mark in the design of furniture and furnishings characterised by a new spirit of modernity and by their execution to the very highest standards in the most refined of materials. Lustrous Japanese lacquers were to enjoy a particular appreciation in these years, most visibly in the work of Jean Dunand, whose striking geometric and stylised natural and figurative motifs made his reputation at the 1925 Exposition Internationale.
The present screen, however, is quite distinct from the work of Dunand. In its colours and techniques, and in the simple but subtly effective motifs – floating, angular shapes that shift according to the angle of articulation and the viewer’s movements – this screen has closer affinities with the work of the other major designer associated with this medium, Eileen Gray. Indeed, the screen had been attributed to her when it first resurfaced in Paris some forty years ago in the collection of Jean-Claude Brugnot (who had acquired documented works by Gray from the estate of her client Georgette Labourdette) and when it appeared at auction in New York in 1989. The screen’s precise provenance before Brugnot is not known and its authorship remains an enigma. The screen’s deep rich brown surfaces, and their counterpoint in the variegated sandy and earthen tints of the motifs and in the textured two-tone ‘laque arrachée’ of the reverse compare closely with specific works by Gray. We are reminded, for example, of the base colour of the brown lacquer screen with incised decoration published in Wendingen in 1924, and of the similar association of dark brown lacquer and two-tone ‘laque arrachée’ of a documented bowl and cover (Philippe Garner, Eileen Gray Designer and Architect, 1993, p. 19). Perhaps the link is the Japanese master Seizô Sougawara, whose virtuosity was crucial in the development of the artisanship required to bring lacquer to the fore in Paris in the Twenties. It was Sougawara who taught Dunand and the talented though less well known Katsu Hamanaka, and who was the close collaborator of Eileen Gray.
There is surely more to be discovered about the connections between these and other artists, artisans, and ateliers involved in the fashion for fine lacquer. While we may not be able to confirm its authorship, this screen asserts its authority on its own terms, for its exceptional craftsmanship and as a sophisticated manifestation of the creative spirit of its time and place.
– Philippe Garner, author of Eileen Gray: Design and Architecture, 1878-1976, Cologne, 1993