Jacques Adnet - Magazine rack - Iron

Jacques Adnet (1900-1984)

Black lacquered metal and brass newspaper holder
Fist-clenched model
Brass stars on the front and back, the clenched fist in gilded bronze for the grip

Height: 43 cm
Width: 28.5 cm
Depth: 21 cm

Very good condition, wear

*Jacques Adnet was born in 1900 in Châtillon-Coligny, France.
On the advice of one of his professors, he entered the competition for the École des Arts Décoratifs in 1916, where he was admitted with flying colors, along with his twin brother Jean. His teachers included Aubert for decoration and Genuys for architecture; the former’s teaching would be formative in Adnet’s future work. Not content with theory alone, diploma in hand, he joined the decorators Tony Selmersheim and Maurice Dufrène, where he learned the art and technique of furniture; he followed the latter when he was appointed director at “La Maîtrise” of the Galeries Lafayette in 1922. At the International Exposition of Decorative and Industrial Arts of 1925, Jacques Adnet and his brother exhibited ceramics on the La Maîtrise stand. They received numerous awards, including a gold medal in the furniture class and a silver medal in the ceramics class. In 1927 Jacques Adnet won the Blumenthal Prize. In 1928 Jacques Adnet became the director of the prestigious Compagnie des Arts Français, whose motto is “Evolution in Tradition.” The young decorator, 28 years old, sought to give the company a different orientation. Even the logo created in 1919 was redesigned in a completely modernist spirit; the tone was set. As a man of his era, Jaques Adnet sought to connect decoration with the new inventions of photography, cinema, electricity, the car, and the airplane. He assembled within his company a remarkable team of painters, including Lurçat, Chagall, Dufy, and Léger; decorators such as Charlotte Perriand, Francis Jourdain, or René Gabriel; as well as glassmakers, damasceners, jewelers, ceramists, ironworkers, and sculptors, such as Goupy, Daurat, Bouquet, Lenoble, Poillerat, Yencesse, or the Giacometti brothers — whose decorative arts works he published after Jean-Michel Frank’s death. Jacques Adnet’s style is characterized by his successful blend of modern aesthetics and traditional craftsmanship. His preferred materials are chrome- or nickel-plated metal, mirror-backed glass, Saint-Gobain glass slabs, Baccarat crystal, parchment, black lacquered wood, or opaline. Jacques Adnet was one of the first to use glass and metal in the manufacture of objects, lighting, furniture, or in architecture, as he did, in collaboration with architect René Coulon, for the Saint-Gobain pavilion for the 1937 Exposition of Arts and Techniques. After his modernist creations of the 1930s and his sumptuous exotic wood or lacquered furniture of the 1940s, Jacques Adnet created, in the 1950s, furniture, lighting, or objects in metal clad with leather or imitation leather (skai). For several decades he produced full furnishing ensembles for private clients, for Côte d’Azur palaces, and for the Ferdinand de Lesseps liner in 1952; he also decorated the study and private apartments of Vincent Auriol at the Rambouillet Castle and at the Élysée. His most famous clients include billionaire Frank Jay Gould, actress Alice Cocéa, director Marcel Carné, and writer Georges Simenon. Rather than fashion people or showbiz figures, he often had as clients intellectuals who preferred discretion, which suited him perfectly. In 1959 he closed the Compagnie des Arts Français and became director of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, a post he held until 1970. Now retired, he devoted himself to his other passions: poetry and gardening. He died in Paris in 1984.