Jean Puiforcat

Jean Puiforcat served in WWI. After the war, he apprenticed as a silversmith and a designer. He lived in Paris. He designed in the art deco style. His silver work has smooth surfaces and is based on the geometric series. Ivory, onyx, lapis lazuli and rosewood were used to decorate pieces. He also used gilding……the process of applying extremely thin sheets of gold, called gold leaf, to a surface.

Puiforcat left Paris and moved to Saint Jean de-Luz, around 1927. He worked briefly in Havana, Cuba, from 1928 through 1930. French painter and sculptor Henri Charlier, who was born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris in 1883, was a good friend. Henry and Puiforcat exchanged many letters which his daughter, Alizabeth Charlier, kept along with photos of a trip that her father Henri made to Havana. The photos were at the shop where Puiforcat and a Cuban sculptor, Juan Comas, were sculpting lions to be casted in bronze for an important Havana Avenue.

Puiforcat, Henri and Comas became acquainted during his stay in Havana. In one of his letters from Cuba, he wrote about how little credit had been given to the Cuban sculptor only because he (Puiforcat) was famous. He seemed to admire Juan Comas' talent very much. Henri and Puiforcat kept the friendship and even met in Mexico around 1943.

Puiforcat co-founded the Union des Artistes Modernes. He started designing tableware and by 1934 he also had designed liturgical. In 1941, he moved to Mexico. He then started exhibiting in the United States. Puiforcat's name is synonymous with Art Deco glamour. Even in his day, the important French silversmith was renowned for the elegant, often mathematical simplicity of his geometric forms and the unexpected combination of flawless metalwork with brilliantly polished hard stones, semiprecious stones, or glass.