Line Vautrin - Design London Wednesday, September 30, 2015 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Private collection, France

  • Literature

    Patrick Mauriès, Line Vautrin: Miroirs, exh. cat., Galerie Chastel-Maréchal, Paris, 2004, pp. 40, 58-59, back cover

  • Catalogue Essay

    Self-taught and fiercely independent, Line Vautrin sought to express the primitive and the mystical through her work in bronze, resin and mirrored glass. Though her childhood exposure to her family’s metal foundry certainly propelled her interest in the craft, her skills were the result of endless experimentations rather than formal training. Vautrin developed Talosel, a proprietary resin, in the post-war period following years of work primarily in bronze. The ensuing imaginative and poetic mirrors have enchanted collectors from the early 1950s until the present. There is an alchemical aspect to the process of creating Talosel, a sense of magic reflected in the fantastical and sometimes mythological nature of Vautrin’s favoured decorative themes, and to an extent in the experience of viewing oneself in a convex mirror.

  • Artist Biography

    Line Vautrin

    French • 1913 - 1997

    After brief stints with the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli and a Parisian photography firm, Line Vautrin taught herself metal foundry, which had been her father's trade, and went door-to-door selling her cast jewelry. In 1937 she rented a stand at the Paris International Exposition that attracted enough clientele for her to open a shop in the Rue de Berri. As business improved, she moved to the more fashionable Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Vautrin started out making jewelry, belts, powder compacts and buttons: At the time, the term for her line of work was parurière (one who makes and sells fashion accessories).

    Eventually, however, she hit on her signature style, developing a material she coined talosel, which comprised layers of cellulose acetate that she carved, gouged, molded and encrusted with colored mirrored glass. This new material enabled her to expand her repertoire to include larger objects such as the mirrors for which she is best known today. The objects that she created in talosel are unlike any others — original, exuberant modern designs that, with the accretions and texture of the scarified talosel, carry the aura of ancient, time-worn relics. Vautrin credited the London art dealer David Gill with re-discovering her work at a 1986 auction of her property in Paris. Her work entered the collection of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and since then has gained major traction in the twentieth-century design market.

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1

'Folie' mirror, or 'Le Soleil a Rendez-vous avec la Lune'

circa 1958
Talosel resin, mirrored glass.
63 x 74.3 x 14 cm (24 3/4 x 29 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.)
Reverse incised with LINE VAUTRIN.

Estimate
£30,000 - 40,000 

Sold for £37,500

Contact Specialist
Madalena Horta e Costa
Head of Sale
+44 20 7318 4019

Design

London Auction 1 October 2015