Jean Cocteau’s poetic artistic legacy lives on in a new collection of decorative textiles and objects designed by upscale Paris-based home furnishings brand Roche Bobois. Embroidered cushions, woven rugs, ceramics, lampshades, upholstery and throws serve as canvases for the late artist’s texts and pictorial designs, using print and embroidery to capture his original drawings and manuscripts.
“Jean Cocteau was a multi-disciplinary protean artist who embraced creativity in all its forms, and this collection shows us several of those facets. With inimitable elegance, Jean Cocteau created a body of work that is considered today to be of great importance. The Roche Bobois collection reminds us of the strength and contemporaneity of his work,” stated Pierre Bergè, who is the executor of Cocteau's estate.
Marking the 50th anniversary of Cocteau’s passing, the project was borne out of a meeting between the luxury furniture giant and the Jean Cocteau Committee to discuss re-issuing a collection of ceramics by the artist, who viewed his clay creations as artworks in their own right.
Produced between 1957 and 1963 by the Madeline-Jolly pottery workshop in Villefranche-sur-Mer, Cocteau compared the designs on the original editions to tattoos, inventing novel techniques, such as an oxide pencil, to apply his markings. For the new limited edition and numbered ceramics line, Roche Bobois sourced an Italian master potter capable of faithfully reproducing the works using traditional glazing and firing methods and authentic ingredients, going from the same colours of clay to the same quantities of engobe and enamel that Cocteau would have used. The artworks come coated with 14 coats of lacquer.
Other highlights from the collection include a range of printed and embroidered cushions decorated with eyes, wings, faces and words; rectangular pillows with a silkscreen print of Cocteau’s “The Sleeper” drawing, edged with black velvet piping, and a solid beech armchair with embroidered motifs and an antique, hand-waxed patina.
Among other odes to Cocteau due to roll out over the coming months, a restored version of Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bête"("Beauty and the Beast"), originally released in 1946, is due for release this fall, alongside “Opium,” a small-budget musical film directed by French-American actress and singer Arielle Dombasle, and co-financed by Bergè.
A number of reprints of Cocteau’s works are planned, as well as the release of previously unpublished correspondence and little-known works. Several biographies will also be published to mark the occasion.
