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.