Design as Art: Sorceress on the Seine
January 2008
Screen legends Ingrid Bergman and Brigitte Bardot and fashion world luminaries Donna Karan, Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs have all been seduced by the designs of Line Vautrin. Her mirrors speak of the sun, her boxes and compacts of love and friendship, her jewelry at once primitive and sophisticated. Vautrin, whose heyday was in the 1940s and ’50s, was all but forgotten in the 1980s, but today collectors are clamoring for her objects and prices are shooting upward.Vautrin (1913–97) was born to a Parisian family of foundry workers. From a young age she proved strong-willed and resistant to instruction, and believed life experience was the best teacher. She worked briefly, greeting clients at the front entrance to Schiaparelli’s Paris showroom. Though her independent streak took over and she quit after a few days, she always credited Schiaparelli with popularizing the large gilt buttons that inspired her future creations.
It was the early 1930s and Vautrin, barely 21, packed up her first collection—a few bracelets resembling big napkin rings—and traveled around the city going door to door. But it was the 1937 International Exhibition for the Arts and Techniques that launched her career and attracted her first customers. She closed the tiny shop she called a "cupboard" on the Rue de Berri and moved to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. During those years she fashioned jewelry, belts, compacts and buttons in gilt and silvered bronze. Her jewelry was inspired by folk tales, Greek mythology, animals (real or imagined) and even a Diaghilev ballet. A necklace depicts Adam and Eve in paradise, a belt tells the tale of Bluebeard and his many wives, a bracelet spells out the seven deadly sins.
With the outbreak of war and shortages of materials, Vautrin improvised by creating caps, foot warmers, shoes and jewelry from wood, felt, feathers and lace. As a Parisian, she intuitively knew that presenting a figure of elegance was one way of showing resistance to the German occupiers.
Success in the postwar years allowed her to move into the Hotel Mégret de Serilly, once owned by Louis XIV’s paymaster, in the then-rundown Marais district. It became her private residence, salon and workshop where as many as 50 workers produced her jewel cases, bags and umbrella handles. Vautrin soon became a well-known figure on the Parisian scene. At an evening gala at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in June 1946, a reporter for France Soir found "Line Vautrin, the queen of buttons, dancing alone in a 1900s dress, a mischievous boater over one eye."
Plagued by business and marital problems, Vautrin moved briefly to Morocco, then returned to Paris and settled on the Left Bank. She became enthralled by a new technique for working with cellulose acetate, a type of resin. She fractured it into tiny slivers, then heated small shards of old and colored mirror glass and encrusted them into the resin to create a mosaic effect. She named the resin "talosel." Utilizing this technique, Vautrin created objects ranging from a coffee table and coffered ceiling in her apartment to small items such as brooches, boxes, buttons and lamp bases. But it is her mesmerizing mirrors with radiating jagged edges that today are the most coveted by collectors, who find it difficult to limit themselves to just one. Vautrin designed 80 different models, all inspired by the sun. "I was always obsessed by the sun," she said.
At Christie’s New York sale of the collection of Hollywood producer Scott Rudin in 2005, 21 Vautrin mirrors were offered. The top one, "Solaire," a sunburst design, circa 1960, sold for $168,000 (est. $40,000–$60,000). A year later Christie’s auctioned "Roi Soleil," circa 1960, at an all-Vautrin sale. It brought $144,000 (est. $40,000–$60,000). "Line Vautrin’s mirrors have a tactile quality that is very appealing, and they mix well with many styles of 20th-century design. They’re a playful luxury," says Carina Villinger, a specialist in Christie’s 20th-century decorative arts and design department in New York.For a sale of a Vautrin collection at Sotheby’s Paris in 2004, a small gilt bronze compact graced the catalogue cover. It was one of her rebus objects—a rebus is a representation of words by pictures, objects or symbols whose names resemble the intended words or syllables in sound—or more simply a fusion of sound and image. In this instance, the compact proclaims "J’ai Grand Appétit de Vous G (Grand) a (Petit) Deux Vous," ("I have a hearty appetite for you"). It sold for $8,778 (est. $4,850–$6,500). "She gets metal to talk," says Frédéric Fieux, partner in Galerie L’Arc en Seine, which held Vautrin exhibitions in Paris (2002) and New York (2003).
Fieux’s comments could equally apply to many of Vautrin’s small objects: boxes, compacts, ashtrays and paperweights inscribed with words of eternal love, centuries-old proverbs and snatches of poetry. "They are meant as a form of light entertainment," says Fieux. At the Rudin sale, a gilt bronze and enamel box bore the inscription "La Reconnaissance est la Mémoire du Coeur." ("Gratitude is the memory of the heart"), a saying by French ecclesiastic Jean-Baptiste Massieu (1743–1818). This piece brought $38,400 against a $6,000 to $8,000 estimate.
By the 1980s Vautrin had faded into obscurity. She hoped a Paris museum would mount an exhibition of her work and wrote to several curators but none responded. "They had forgotten me, tant pis ("what a shame"), she said in response and auctioned most of her work at the Hotel Drouot in 1986 and 1988.
New York–based antiques dealer Louis Bofferding credits Paris artist and New Yorker illustrator Pierre Le-Tan with resurrecting Vautrin. A tastemaker with a great eye, Le-Tan had spotted some of her pieces in a shop window and in the pages of old magazines from the 1940s. Determined to track her down, he checked the Paris phone directory and found her listed. Le-Tan introduced London dealer David Gill to her work, and in 1988 Gill held the first exhibition of her objects.
Vautrin died in 1997, and two years later, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris granted her wish and presented a retrospective of her work.
The designer is certainly not forgotten by Wayne Schwartz, a passionate collector turned dealer in Amagansett, New York. "J’adore Line Vautrin," says Schwartz, whose gallery is filled with her mirrors, boxes and jewelry. "Don’t call her a costume jeweler. She was an artist." Among his dozen or so mirrors is a 36-inch "Soleil à Pointes" with a price tag of $200,000.
Another Vautrin fan, New York dealer Liz O’Brien, currently has a selection of her small mirrors ranging from 8 to 14 inches and priced at $14,000 to $28,000. "Known as miroirs sorcières, [witches’ glasses], they really do perform magic," says O’Brien. "People are bewitched by them."
Christie’s, New York
212.636.2000 christies.com
David Gill Gallery, London
011.44.20.7793.1100 davidgillgalleries.com
Galerie L’Arc en Seine
New York 212.585.2587
Paris 011.33.1.43.29.11.02 arcenseine.com
Liz O’Brien, New York
212.755.3800 lizobrien.com
Sotheby’s, Paris
011.1.33.53.05.53.05 sothebys.com
Wayne Schwartz, Amagansett, N.Y.
631.267.2400