The Master Dinandier
Jean Dunand
“There seems to be no limit to M. Dunand’s enthusiasm and interest. He apparently recognizes no rules and bows to no traditions.” — Amalie Busk Deady, The Craftsman, 1911
Last year an important French Art Deco cabinet by the master furniture designer Eugène Printz (1889-1948) and master dinandier Jean Dunand (1877-1942) sold for $5.49 million at Christie’s New York — establishing a house (and worldwide) record for any work — either a collaboration or independent work— by the two French designers. One might argue, even more significant, the sale marked the third-highest price ever garnered within the category of twentieth and twenty-first century design. It was also the highest price fetched for an Art Deco piece since the sale of Eileen Gray’s fantastical Fauteuil de Dragon (1917-1919) from the fabled collection of Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) and Pierre Bergé (1930-2017). The cabinet, which is dated circa 1937, exhibits the mastery and singularity Printz and Dunand attained by combining traditional craftsmanship with a modern streamlined aesthetic; not only does it mark a collaboration between two of the most important designers of the Art Deco period, but also a friendship that would last for the duration of their careers. Printz trained in the classical cabinetmaking methods of the ancien régime, and approached his furniture as works of art through which he fully embraced the sensuously curved neo-traditionalism of the 1920’s. Similarly, Dunand utilized traditional lacquering and metalsmithing methods to develop innovative surface effects, simplifying to the extreme lines in subtly constructed colour gradients. The absence of any detailing on the structure of the piece is counterpointed by the masterful geometric patterning of the panelled façade, a subtle play of squares dots and lines inlaid in a white metal against the warm metal ground, the leaves angled, suggesting the folds of a screen, making the admirer forget the furniture itself and thus blurring the boundaries between art and design. Indeed Dunand’s masterfully decorated doors, with their striking geometric décor, recall Boulle work and bronze mounts from the era of Louis XIV and XV, while also pre-empting the importance of metals in modernist furniture at large.
Important Cabinet, detail (c. 1937) by Eugène Printz and Jean Dunand that set an auction record at Christie’s in 2019, image c/o Christie’s
Félix Marcilhac’s Paris apartment, featuring a cabinet (1921) by Jean Dunand, photograph by Jerome Galland
A sculptor by trade, Dunand developed a fascination with metals and in the 1920s established his reputation as the most brilliant dinandier — or worker in non-precious metals — of his generation. Characteristic of the Art Deco movement, his works are boldly adorned with all manner of pattern and organic motif, featuring forms that fluctuate between the ovular and the rectilinear. Born Jules John Dunand in Petit-Lancy, Switzerland (a former French municipality, handed to the Swiss after Napoleon’s defeat), Dunand was only fourteen when he began his formal artistic training, studying sculpture and design at the École des Arts Industriels de Genève, where he won several prizes and received his diploma. Then in 1897 he was awarded a travel grant to continue his studies in Paris, where he became an apprentice to the renowned sculptor of Art Nouveau, Jean-Auguste Dampt (1854-1945). Dampt had an appreciation for the decorative arts and firmly believed that all artists should also be competent craftsmen. Dunand, the son of a goldsmith, firmly agreed. He spent his summer vacations in Geneva with a local coppersmith, learning the intricacies of dinanderie, a special technique originating in the Flemish town of Dinant, which was a centre for brass work during the Middle Ages. Dunand would encrust non-precious metals with gold and silver, then highlight certain parts using oxidation or blacken others for the piece to remain precious. Three years into his time with Dampt, Dunand was given the opportunity to show a bust he had sculpted at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. From the end of the nineteenth century he continued to exhibit regularly in salons and in 1905 he was elected to the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts after completing the interior design of a salon for the Comtesse de Béarn.
Side table, lacquered wood, coquille d'œuf (c. 1925) by Jean Dunand, image c/o Sotheby’s
In 1909, Dunand would change his given name to Jean, and in 1922 he became a naturalized French citizen. Although a gifted sculptor, it was around this time Dunand decided to focus on his metalwork. He began experimenting with copper, and toyed with geometric patterns, reflective of the burgeoning Art Deco style he would later fully embrace. His decision was soon vindicated when in 1904 the Musée des Arts Décoratifs purchased one of his dinanderie vases for its permanent collection, solidifying his status within the medium. Dunand received national acclaim and would regularly show his dinanderie in the Salon de la Nationale des Beaux Arts and the Salon d’Automne, along with his contemporaries Rodin (1840-1917) and Renoir (1841-1919). His artistic turning point however came in 1912 when he began working with legendary Japanese lacquer practitioner Seizo Sugawara (1884-1937). A problem facing all metalworkers was corrosion, and Dunand was determined to find an effective, yet artistic, method to combat the problem. He was intrigued by the Asian use of lacquer and for some time he had been looking for a local native artisan to serve as an instructor, but was unsuccessful, calling them all simply “varnishers”. Sugawara had emigrated to France from the small village of Johoji in the North of Japan, to curate the lacquerware displayed in the Japanese exhibition at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. He decided to remain in Paris and hoped to make a living teaching the skills of his profession. The Irish architect Eileen Gray (1878-1976), Sugawara’s first prominent student, introduced her instructor to Dunand, and in 1912, the two men came to an agreement: Sugawara would teach Dunand the closely-guarded secrets of urushi (which is the Japanese word for both the sap used to make the lacquer and the finished object itself) and Dunand would give Sugawara classes in dinanderie. After 13 lessons over two months Dunand’s immediate expertise in the medium was remarkable; he even mastered the highly desirable coquille d’oeuf, in which small shards of eggshell are painstakingly embedded into the lacquer so as to form various patterns (either the inside or the outside of the shell could be used, each giving a different effect). Using this method, Dunand would go on to create not only vases and small accessories, but monumental wall panels and entire rooms.
His earlier pieces are more closely reflective of the Art Nouveau period’s fascination with Japonisme, which largely used naturalistic motifs and elements. Dunand often worked the surfaces with repoussé, chasing, as well as inlays of variously coloured metals. As times moved on, however, and tastes changed, he embraced the shift from traditional ornamental styles to geometric patterns that were bold and less complex, reflecting the growing interest in African Art, Futurism and Cubism, his style becoming one that today is synonymous with that of Art Deco. Dunand soon opened a specialised lacquer workshop, where he employed over a hundred practitioners and Indo-Chinese artists (whom he believed were less susceptible to the health risks posed by the constant exposure to lacquer). Eager to expand the French market for this Eastern art form he went beyond the teachings of Sugawara, developing new colours, such as greens, corals and yellows — not only using lacquerware for traditional decorative objet such as vases and bowls but also for portraiture, furniture, wall panels and jewellery. Indeed his wide cuff bracelets and narrow circular neck collars decorated with red, black and yellow lacquer were made famous by Art Deco superstar and chanteuse Josephine Baker (1906-1975).
Table lamp, silver-polished pewter, patinated copper (c. 1925) by Jean Dunand, image c/o Sotheby’s
Dunand continued to show his works throughout France, notably at the Salon d’Automne and the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, where he exhibited the now iconic smoking room interior for the French Embassy Pavilion (which recently came up for sale in Paris and was purchased by the French Government as a National Treasure); in creating the interior Dunand applied black, red and silver lacquered panelling to the walls and lacquered furniture which sat beneath an ascending ziggurat ceiling. The couturier Jacques Doucet (1853-1929) wrote Dunand after visiting the pavilion to express his tribute to the interior “I have always admired your work, but what I saw today showed complete mastery and confirmed in every way your greatness as an artist”. While there Dunand would also meet the renowned Parisian milliner Madame Agnès. He called her “a woman of taste and level-headedness” in a Vogue article of that same year and in 1926 she contracted him to design an office interior in her new salon on the Rue Saint-Florentin; it was the perfect commission that allowed Dunand to showcase his talents to her sophisticated and affluent client base.
As well as his lifetime collaboration with Printz, Dunand contributed to the furniture designs of Pierre Legrain (1889-1929) and Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933). As a designer he showed great versatility, adept at an array of themes and styles — ranging from the lush and decorative, that could involve exotic flora and fauna, to vividly colored graphic motifs — and would adapt to the tastes of a client. When working with Printz for e.g. he always produced bold modernist designs that concealed the furniture and its doors and handles, leaving nothing more than a beautiful geometric illusion. Another important collaboration was with the painter and sculptor Jean Lambert-Rucki (1888-1967), an avant-garde artist who created motifs of bizarre and highly imaginative animals on vases, screens and furniture, and who also created sculptures based on African figures, which Dunand then embellished with lacquer.
Dunand was, arguably, the most important and influential metalsmith and lacquer artist of his generation; distinguished by his unprecedented and unmatched genius in the ancient, almost forgotten, technique of urishi, which would permeate his artistic voice for much of his most prolific and successful period. Although primarily concerned with this medium, dinanderie was his first love — an art form which he tirelessly elevated to a more noble rank. Indeed his career and reputation were built on his mastery of those two crafts; having essentially brought manual metalworking back into fashion. Dunand now stands out as one of the foremost Renaissance men of the Art Deco period. He skilfully combined the artistry of Oriental lacquer work with European decorative designs and his approach to lacquering metal and wood was ideal for presenting the clean angles and sharp geometric lines of the streamlined Art Deco.