Janle for Max Le Verrier - Art Deco spelter figure bookends,
circa 1930, France titled "Insouciance" - the spelter
figures cold-painted green and gazing upwards. Janle is the
pseudonym of the sculptor Jean Lemoine who designed many
pieces for the Le Verrier foundry, as well as producing works in
ceramic.
These are the original versions of the bookends, with the Le Verrier
re-editions having marble bases.
Max Le Verrier 1891 - 1973. After serving in WW1, Le Verrier
studied at the École des Beaux-Art in Geneva alongside Marcel
Bouraine and Pierre Le Faguays who remained friends for life, often
working together. In the early 1920s he inherited a small foundry in
which he was soon producing small sculptures and decorative objects
such as lamps, ashtrays, bookends and hood ornaments in the Art Deco
style. In addition to his own sculptures, he cast for the artists
Pierre Le Faguays, Marcel Bouraine, André Vincent Becquere and Jules
Edmont Masson among others. He mostly worked with bronze, ivory,
zinc, terracotta and ceramics. Le Verrier showed his work in the
salons of the Société des artistes décorateurs of which he was an
elected member and at the Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs et industriels modern in 1925 he won a gold medal. He
also exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition in 1937.
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