Claude Lalanne
Cast real cabbages, ginkgo leaves and human limbs in bronze, and made furniture out of them.
Claude Lalanne was born in Paris in 1925, trained in architecture and decorative arts, and met Francois-Xavier Lalanne in 1952; they worked separately but exhibited together as Les Lalanne for the rest of their lives. Her half of the practice is botanical and bodily: galvanoplasty and electroforming used to cast real leaves, branches, cabbages and crocodiles directly, then assembled into mirrors, chairs, benches, chandeliers and jewellery. The Choupatte, a cabbage on chicken feet, is the emblem. She made the body casts for Yves Saint Laurent's 1969 collection and worked with Serge Gainsbourg and with the gardens at Les Avelines. She died in 2019.
The work sits between sculpture and functional furniture and the market treats it as both, which makes precise cataloguing essential. Pieces exist as unique works, as small numbered editions and as larger editions issued through galleries and later through Bourgeois-era editions, and the same model can appear in several sizes and finishes. Signature is usually cast or stamped, with an edition number, and the gallery documentation — Jansen, Artcurial, Ben Brown, Paul Kasmin among others — is the usual anchor. Gilding and patina are original and are frequently over-cleaned.
If you own a work by Claude Lalanne
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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