Jean Baptiste Gauvenet (worked at Sèvres, 1908–50) was one of the rare staff members of the Sèvres Manufactory whose models for lighting, sculptures, and vases were produced in several editions. In 1925 he sculpted the models for a set of three female figures in Art Deco–style dress with fashionable swirling capes. Their ball gowns were inspired by costumes from the Ballets Russes. Drawings created under Lechevallier-Chevignard’s direction for the second dancer’s costume feature a butterfly pattern in keeping with Art Deco textile designs used by celebrated couturier Paul Poiret. Following the long tradition of colored sculpture at Sèvres, each dancer was produced in a small series.

Animal sculptures were all the rage at the Sèvres Manufactory during the Art Deco period. Domestic and exotic animals were often represented with sleek, compact geometric shapes. François Pompon’s Bear and the Martel Brothers’ Cat exemplify a search for simplification and stylization characteristic of the Art Deco movement. Other sculptors took a more lifelike approach to the representation of animals, illustrating the depth of creativity and diversity of the period at Sèvres.

Few low reliefs were made during this period, but there was a growing tendency to produce sculptures with shallow carving and flattened planes, as illustrated here by Louis-Henri Bouchard’s Gazelle, which was created for the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris.

Sculptors Jan and Joël Martel modeled this feline figure after their own cat. Its many iterations in multiple materials attest to the manufactory’s strategic shift in the interwar period under Lechevallier-Chevignard’s leadership: the freedom to explore new techniques and materials propelled the institution into the twentieth century. 

Cat was the Martels’ first collaboration with the Sèvres Manufactory. The twin brothers, who never parted ways in art or in life, provided designs to the manufactory until 1938, signing their joint pieces with just one name, “Martel” or “J. Martel.”