Suzanne Lalique

Suzanne Lalique-Haviland has created many designs for ceramics and porcelains, textiles, decorative objects and glassware. She was also a painter and, in the second part of her life, set and costume designer for theatre.
The granddaughter of the ornemantalist sculptor Auguste Ledru (1837-1918) and daughter of the well-known designer of jewels and glassware René Lalique (1860–1945), Suzanne has begun to design decorative objects from 1910 (she probably started with a powder box for the René Coty perfumes). She created decorations for the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres and provided a lot of models for printed textiles or fabrics, which were regularly exhibited and edited by Maison Lauer or Tassinari and Chatel.
She created many gouache-painted decorative screens, highly appreciated by Jacques Doucet (1853-1929), who owned several of them.
She also collaborated regularly with her father René, particularly for the interior decoration of the Paris ocean liner in 1919 (she notably designed the textiles and the curtains for the Salon de conversation). Very aware of the artistic skills of his daughter, René Lalique encouraged Suzanne in participating in the family enterprise. From 1920 to 1930, a large part of the Lalique glass production is inspired by her watercolors, in which she reveals her passion for nature and the vegetal world. She became quickly the art deco muse of the family enterprise, making it enter fully in this productive golden era, by her great sense of stylization, her artistic skill for developing geometric shapes and mixing all sources of inspiration.
Married in 1917 with Paul Burty-Haviland, a photographer from the famous porcelain family, she became artistic collaborator of the Haviland manufacture in Limoges from 1924. She designs models until 1935.
In the 1930’s she turns herself to the painting, producing mostly still lifes, compositions occasionally reproduced from her husband’s photographs. From 1937 to the beginning of the 1970’s, she created numerous sets and costumes for the theatre, especially for the Comédie Française. She also was a regular collaborator of Jean Meyer for the Théâtre des Célestins, in Lyon, until 1985.

Works associated with this person or group

  • Beauvais Vase, 1931

    Tall, slightly flared footless vase of clear glass with ten paneled sides. On two opposite sides are handles in form of graduated satin-finished scrolls with slightly oblique grooving at edges.

  • Tourbillons [Whirlwinds] Vase, 1926

    Broad tapering cylindrical glass body, its deep wall carved and etched with a continuous pattern of swirled lines, their surfaces highlighted in black enamel.

  • Gros Scarabées Vase, 1923

    Clear brown glass, globular body terminating in small shallow base, surface patterned with large beetles. Top rim fitted with silver collar with incised abstract decoration.