Puett's world

J. Morgan Puett's Chicken Coop


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Mr and Mrs

Vache Paysage, 2006.


Hippopotame II (bar)
Bronze, iron, copper and wood.


Rhinocrétaire
François-Xavier Lalanne.


Grand Sphinx, 1999.


Banbiloba, 2005.


Pomme de Ben, h: 48 x w: 36.2 x d: 33.5 in.


Les Grandes Berces, 2000.


Gingko Guéridon II, 2007.


Banc Crocodile, 2005.
Claude Lalanne.
All images from JGM. Galerie

The husband and wife team of François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne have been creating some of the 20Th Century's most original furnitures for over forty years. They are the personification of what the decorative arts can and should be. His pieces are monumental, allegorical, yet lighthearted. Hers are organic, poetic, and dream like.
François-Xavier Lalanne's credo, The supreme art is the art of living.

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High Priestess of the Neo Baroque

Palm Mirror



Coral Head



Room view with Cloud Table and Coral Chandelier



Coral Grotto wall light



Flames Head



Blue Grotto Table

In the Tarot the High Priestess represents unconscious awareness and mystery. For over twenty years Oriel Harwood has been creating just such pieces. Her work is almost from a different time. A time when the world still believed in dragons and sea monsters, gods and goddesses. In her hands myths are made real.

Oriel Harwood's work is available through the David Gill Galleries


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Serge Roche

Serge Roche, Sculpture

Around 1930, somewhat against the trend of his era, Serge Roche embraced the baroque. His knowledge of the rococo decors and mirror rooms of baroque Europe helped to make him an instant success. First with an exhibition of frames and mirrors at Georges Petit's gallery in Paris, then with an array of furnitures at Elsie de Wolfe's gallery in New York. His successes eventually took him to the London gallery of Syrie Maugham where he showed an expanded range of sculpted and mirrored works.


Mirror fireplace from the rue Las Cases
Only one other was created, for Mrs C. Suydam Cutting, New York


Chandelier, painted metal and glass, circa 1937

He designed and produced furnitures, objects and decors that would hold their own for more than thirty years with a select clientele ranging from the likes of the couturier Chanel to Prince Ali Khan. Created from stucco and mirrors, his consoles, obelisks, fireplaces and decorative objects re-invented the baroque for the 20th century.


Mirror, 1930 - 1939


Plaster objects


A highly important mirror.
One of only two known examples, the other being in a private collection. Syrie Maugham purchased this looking glass from Serge Roche and placed it above the mirrored fireplace in the drawing room of Robin Wilson's apartment in London which she decorated in 1936. In the 1970s, Roche reacquired the mirror.


In addition to his own surrealist and neo-baroque works, Roche collaborated with Jean Michel Frank, Gilbert Poillerat, and the famous Sevres factory. His famous magic mirror was used by Jean Cocteau in his film La Belle et la Bette (1948), which ironically was to mark the end of the vogue of the neo-baroque movement.


La Belle et la Bete

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"Be original or die"

"IF WE ARE GOING TO HAVE COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE LET'S HAVE A RIOT OF COLOUR, NONE OF YOUR WISHY-WASHY HAND-TINTED EFFECTS" - Madame Yevonde

Madame Yevonde (Yevonde Philone Cumbers, 1893 - 1975) was a photographer who pioneered the use of colour in portrait photography.

In 1911, she took an apprenticeship with Lallie Charles, the leading woman portrait photographer of the day. In 1914, having only taken one actual photograph, Madame Yevonde decided to set-up her own studio. Over the years she gained quite a unique and personal style, as well as a name for herself with London society, as a premier portrait photographer. In 1921, she started exhibiting her work at The Royal Photographic Society Annual Exhibition.


Self portrait with Vivex camera, 1937


Self portrait with image of Hecate, 1940

Madame Yevonde found the early thirties very successful. She started experimenting with the newly available Vivex Colour process, invented by Dr. D. A. Spencer. At the time, few found colour in photographs to be acceptable or natural and were actively hostile towards her new work. Yevonde made it her personal mission to convert the myopic public into seeing colour again.
In 1932, Yevonde hired the Albany Gallery in London to exhibit 70 of her colour and her monochrome prints. This was the first exhibition of colour portrait work in England by any photographer and it received a glowing review in the British Journal of Photography ... Mme Yevonde has most emphatically established her place among the leading and most up-to-date exponents of photographic portraiture.



Artist with workmen in foreground
The Queen Mary

In 1933, she flung herself wholeheartedly into her colour work and over the next six years did her most creative work. She was now being sought after by members of London society, including the Duke and Duchess of Kent, who wanted more nontraditional, adventurous portraiture. She was also sought after to do big advertising jobs by companies such as Christie's, Daimler, and in 1936 she was commissioned by Fortune Magazine to shoot the Queen Mary on her maiden voyage.



Edwardian girl, advertising shot c.1938


Shelling peas, advertising shot c.1937


Study of cover of Woman & Beauty Magazine, 1937


During this time she began her theme of Goddesses and photographed members of the London elite as mythological characters including Medusa, Europa, Daphne, and Venus. Today, this is probably the work that Madame Yevonde is best known for.


Mrs Edward Mayer as Medusa


Lady Milbanke as Penthesila, Queen of the Amazons


The Hon. Mrs Bryan Guinness (Lady Diana Mosley) as Venus

In 1939, war broke out and soon after Colour Photographs Ltd., where the Vivex color process was manufactured and processed, closed. Madame Yevonde was forced to stop working in colour. To add insult to injury, this same year her estranged husband, the playwright Edgar Middleton, died. Even after the war ended, the Vivex colour process was never to become a standard again. Instead of settling with any other form of colour process, Yevonde began experimenting with black and white again and soon developed an interest in solarisation.

She continued working up until her death in 1975, just two weeks short of her 83rd birthday, but is chiefly remembered for her work of the 1930s, which did much to make colour photography accepted.

Editions of Madame Yevonde's work are available through The Yevonde Portrait Archive.

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Agnes Poitevin-Navarre

Filters [Louise]

My latest art obsession is the work of Agnes Poitevin-Navarre. I first came across her work at the RCA Secret 2006. Unable to get any of her pieces either this year or last, I decided to contact her. Always an idea that fills me with trepidation. Just because one is drawn to an artist's work it does not necessarily mean one will be drawn to the artist. We met at the 198 Gallery, where three of her pieces are in the current group exhibition, Blind Memories. I was bowled over. Agnes (French pronunciation) was thoroughly charming and passionate about her work, which is fascinating, thought provoking, and beautifully executed.

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