“Often I start with the classic and end up in the most excessive modern. One idea pushes the other, fantasy blows on it, and poetry carries it all away. I never really know where I'm going." 

 —Line Vautrin

The present “Folie” mirror represents a striking departure from Line Vautrin’s more familiar designs, which often feature colorful mirrored glass arranged into mosaic-like, radiating frames. In contrast, this piece employs black Talosel cut into a bold star shape. The points of the star have been carefully heated and manipulated to undulate outward from the central mirror, evoking the organic, rhythmic motion of a starfish gliding along the ocean floor. One of these star points curls upward, delicately cradling a small convex mirror, adding both asymmetry and a sense of playfulness. The work also bears a poetic alternate title: “Le Soleil a Rendez-vous avec la Lune,” or “The Sun Has a Date with the Moon.” This lyrical phrase suggests a cosmic duality—light and dark, day and night, sun and moon. The title enhances the mirror’s evocative power, transforming it from a decorative object into a symbolic meeting point between opposites.

Line Vautrin, born in 1913 into a family of metalworkers in Faubourg Saint-Antoine, came to her art honestly, if not conventionally. Both her father and grandfather were metalworkers and Vautrin absorbed metalworking techniques early, learning to mold and chase bronze as a child. Despite this familial pedigree, she remained self-taught and irrepressibly independent, her education unfolding more in museums and workshops than in formal institutions.

Vautrin's first true foray into metalworking came after school, when she began selling handmade gilt-bronze jewelry door to door in Paris. Success came slowly, but not without flashes of brilliance. Early influences ranged from ancient Cretan artifacts to the splendors of Tutankhamun's tomb, encounters that left her, in her words, "dazzled." These archaic motifs lodged in her imagination, giving her work a timeless eccentricity even if it departed from the chrome and clean lines dominating the 1930s aesthetic.

After a brief stint as a greeter at Elsa Schiaparelli's boutique, it was confirmed that Vautrin was not built for the monotony of working for others. She quickly returned to focusing on her own designs, and in 1937, at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques in Paris, her gilt bronze jewelry attracted sufficient attention to allow her to open her own shop. The "cupboard," as she called it, on Rue de Berri was barely a boutique, but it brimmed with inventive accessories—brooches, earrings, buttons—each made in limited editions and suffused with her idiosyncratic style.

The 1940s brought greater sophistication to her work. After marrying the painter Jacques-Armand Bonnaud in 1942, the couple took up residence in the ornate Hôtel Mégret de Sérilly in the Marais. There, Vautrin's pieces—puzzle-like boxes, ashtrays, powder compacts—were handmade by a cadre of young women in what was described as a peaceful, machinery-free atelier where craftsmanship held sway over industry. The building itself became a mise en scène for her baroque imagination: ivy-covered columns, painted Venetian statues, and rococo plasterwork coexisted with a modernist sensibility, illustrating her enduring ability to balance absurdity with refinement.

In 1949, a new chapter opened with a move to Casablanca, where Bonnaud had been invited by the Moroccan royal family to contribute to palace decor. Vautrin, less enchanted with the social demands of colonial life, quietly made a revolutionary discovery: cellulose acetate. She called it "Talosel," a contraction of its French name (aceTAte celluLOSe ELabore), and began shaping this thermoplastic into fantastical, organic forms. The material offered her the freedom to move beyond bronze and into sculptural abstraction.

The Moroccan adventure was short-lived. After three years, Vautrin returned to Paris with her daughter, Marie-Laure, and divorced Bonnaud. The separation proved catalytic. Back in Paris, she opened a boutique on Rue de l'Université, where she unveiled her most iconic creations: the "sorcières," or "witch" mirrors. These jewel-like objects, encased in Talosel and often sun-shaped, embodied her lifelong obsession with fire and light. "I’ve always been obsessed with the sun," she once said. "For me, the sun is fire. And the forge is the symbol of work – work with fire. But I add water to the fire for serenity, represented by the transparency of the mirrors." Ever the dramatist, Vautrin staged her boutique with flair. Mirrors were hidden behind curtains; displayed all at once, she feared, they would cancel each other out. Like their maker, each sorcière demanded its own moment in the light.

Unlike many of Vautrin’s more overtly decorative works, her “Folie” mirror embraces a more sculptural and enigmatic quality. The dark, nearly matte surface of the Talosel absorbs light rather than reflecting it, allowing the polished mirror at the center to glow with even greater intensity. In this way, the “Folie” mirror balances restraint with flourish, and mystery with revelation, reinforcing Vautrin’s enduring fascination with mythology, celestial imagery, and the expressive potential of her beloved and unconventional material.

Phillips wishes to thank the Comité Line Vautrin for their assistance authenticating the present lot.