PEWTER CREAMER - ATELIER A.E.CHANAL

Look at that Lip !!!

My second purchase of 2023 was a Vinnies find of a French piece of pewter with a tiny signature. I had no idea of who had made this piece of pewter when I headed off to the counter to pay the ticket price last Wednesday. But I like ‘planishing’ - surface decoration on metal. I also liked the form of the object ; it had a French elegance that is quite different to English pewter of the Arts & Crafts period. The straw covered handle was still in good condition. The impressed signature was so tiny on the base that not even my loupe could give me any real idea of who and where. A ‘Mystery Object’ yet again. To start off 2023. My first purchase earlier hat day had been a fifties donkey from a firm I knew well - this piece of pewter was more interesting.

One of my learnt tricks is to use talcum powder on difficult signatures …. this got me started on my search ... but the solution came the next day. What I could see for sure was *ECHAN** - the asterisks were unclear letters. I was fairly certain there was an A at the beginning …. And finally I came across A.E.CHANAL on the net but with a note ‘florid’ signature. That signature was on pewter pieces with a 'more deco feel'. Finally on ‘Images’ I found the a clearer version of the tiny signature impressed on the body of a pewter bowl on the net.

The attribution on most of the pieces for sale on the net mention Alice Chanal (1872-1951) and Eugene Louis Chanal (1872-1925).

When I looked for further information about the Parisian firm of the 'Atelier A.E. Chanal: orfèvrerie et dinanderie', I realised that Eugene Louis Chanal was not really the important character, but rather his wife Alice. I am not certain when they were married but it must have been round 1900 when they moved to Paris. Eugene Louis was an artist and Alice was a metal-worker. It was Alice who got Eugene to join her with creating objects in metal. They established a studio in the suburb of Clamart on the south west outskirts of Paris. Alice Holbach Chanal is recorded as being the artist producing jewellery, clocks, buckles and various wares in silver, copper and pewter at exhibitions in the early 1900’s.

Alice Holbach (1872-1951) was born in Brussels into a bourgeois family and she moved to England in the 1890’s to study and came into contact with with Arts & Crafts metalwork and learnt the basic craft skills in England. Her friend and roommate Jeanne De Brouckère (Brussels, 1887–Hampstead 1945) seems to have been an early influence. Back in Brussels they exhibited metal work at the artists’ collective La Libre Esthétique in Brussels. Around that time (1899) the important French Arts and Crafts figure Armand Point took both women into his artists’ collective the ‘Association Artistique de Haute-Claire’.

It is the involvement of these female artists which are being being of import in the development of French Arts & Crafts and later in French Art Deco.

Atelier A.E. Chanal: orfèvrerie et dinanderie. The name A.E.Chanal is seen on objects with both an Arts & Crafts and Art Deco feel. The firm changed tack at the time of WWI and worked mostly in pewter. Copper was used for munitions manufacture rather than art wares. The mark of 'A.E.Chanal' was used well after the death of Alice's husband in 1925.

Alice Holbach died in 1951 at the age of 79.