"Line Vautrin: Bijoux Et Objets" 1992 MAURIES, Patrick (SOLD)

1992[109] pp. 8.5" x 8.75"Thames & Hudson Line Vautrin is one of those archetypally French personalities - others are Cocteau, Piaf and Christian Berard - whose talents are compounded of dreams, poetry, images from the past and a mischievous sense of fun. Since she was five years old, she has, like an alchemist turning base metals into gold, transformed humble materials into miracles of beauty and imagination. Even the war-time scarcity of metals did not stop her; they made invention all the more important. Her career took off from a shop in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore and a Louis XV hotel in the Marais, housing her workshops, showroom and apartment, which became a veritable Aladdin's cave.Like Schiaparelli, Vautrin pioneered designer buttons; but hers were part of a range of jewelry that is utterly unlike anyone else's: made in a variety of substances from gilt bronze to resin, and in forms inspired by ancient Greek coins, medieval folk art, animals, word-games, or, in her ex