Jean Després. Bijoutier et orfèvre entre Art déco et modernité

Jean Despres: Jeweler and Goldsmith between Art Deco and Modernity

Melissa Gabardi

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    • Well represented in the Decorative Arts collection thanks to a significant donation from the artist, the work of Jean Després will open the exhibition for this first retrospective dedicated to him.

    Jean Després (1889-1980) was one of the most innovative artists of the 1920s and 1930s in the fields of jewelry and goldsmithing. At 16, he left Avallon and his parents' gift shop to begin his apprenticeship with a goldsmith in Paris. He completed his training with drawing lessons from schools in the City of Paris and attended the Bateau-Lavoir, where he met Modigliani, Picasso, Signac, De Chirico and, above all, Braque, who soon became his “best friend”.

    Després worked mainly with silver, whose whiteness, very fashionable in the 1930s, is barely altered by the few touches brought by semi-precious stones such as onyx, coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli or chalcedony, for prices which remained, in this period of acute economic crisis, affordable, even though he did not disdain to create jewelry works based on precious stones and metals to order.

    Després was also one of the undisputed master craftsmen of the movement for the revival of table goldsmithing and religious goldsmithing. His pitchers, his teapots, his candelabra, his cutlery, mainly in pewter, but also in silver, vermeil or silver-plated metal, which he assembled himself with a hammer, are characterized by their simple shapes, their harmonious volumes, their sober ornamentation.


    • Size: 23 x 30.5 cm
    • 224 pages
    • 350 color and black & white illustrations
    • Hardcover under dust jacket
    • ISBN: 978-2-9155-4219-6

    Text in French only