Email From Camille Fauré (1874-1956) Limoges

Very beautiful Email painted on copper, gilded wood frame by Camille Fauré, signed lower right C Fauré Limoges, representing the "Praying Virgin Mary". History: Camille Fauré was born in Périgueux in 1827 and frequented the artistic circles of Limoges early on, where his family had lived since 1887. After his apprenticeship, he took over the family business of house painting, diversifying his activities, before opening his own enamel workshop in 1920. Enamels were fashionable then and Limoges was the center of this know-how. To assist him in this adventure, Camille Fauré hires the enameller Alexandre Marty to create vases whose floral decorations are still marked by the heritage of Art Nouveau. It targets a high-end clientele, those of foreign buyers, department stores and Parisian establishments in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. To do this, Camille Fauré hires five highly skilled enamellers (including Pierre Bardy, Louis Valade and Lucie Dadat) and behaves both as an entrepreneur and as a patron, giving them real creative freedom. At Fauré, the rule will remain immutable that each creator has plenty of time to make a vase, the price of which will in any case depend on the work provided. The entrepreneur is clear: he is looking for the production of exceptional pieces, with the “sole” requirement being that of perfect workmanship. The "hands" of Atelier Fauré will thus be able to freely play with the codes of the modern movement - Cubism, geometry, bold colors - by transfiguring them with a subtle interplay of sometimes opaque and sometimes translucent materials. This production of vases with Art Deco, geometric and relief decorations is the subject of new signatures for its marketing: "Fauré, Limoges, France" or "C Fauré Limoges France". The success of this avant-garde aesthetic will be as dazzling as it is ephemeral: from 1925 to 1930. How not to mention here Charles Baudelaire who affirmed that: "Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, half of art, the other half of which is the eternal and the immutable"? From this half-decade, however, came a few thousand non-figurative pieces marked by Art Deco, before Fauré redirected its production towards the mass market, via floral and naturalistic decorations, while continuing to produce vases of the previous period. He then experienced real commercial success, but an impoverishment at the artistic level, while he ran his workshop until his death in 1956, when his daughter Andrée took over the management of the workshop which remained until it closed. final in 1985.