Janette Laverrière

Complex interplay of Modernism and Art Deco

The Swiss-French interior designer, artist, and political activist Janette Laverrière was a prominent member of the Modernist design scene in postwar France. Through her varied practice, Laverrière mastered the interplay between the contrasting styles of Modernism and Art Deco. At her death in 2011, she left behind an eclectic oeuvre of whimsical furniture, auratic installations, and her Evocations, a complex series of sculptural mirror objects with an eccentric twist.

Now, Laverrière has posthumously regained recognition: though her furniture designs were acclaimed throughout her century-long life, her artistic work has found a new spotlight today, and her entire oeuvre is entering the canon anew. In the last years of her life, she granted exclusive production licenses of her work to the director of JL Editions. The JL Editions is a well selected product line of limited and open editions of Laverrière's designs available only through this website. The assortment includes the hand-wrought lamps Chapeau Chinois I and II, which combine Modernist materials and Art Deco elegance, the rotating cherry-wood Bibliothèque Tournante, and a selection of the surrealistic Evocations series.