Jean Lérat’s lozenge sculpture which led the Ader auction on €105,000 (£91,305).
They met at the pottery of Armand Bedu in La Borne in Cher, a village with a long tradition of pottery making from local clay.
The Lérats settled there in the 1940s and helped to instigate the revival of the craft. La Borne today is a thriving pottery village with a centre for Contemporary ceramics, pottery museums and many potters working in the area.
They worked in stoneware producing a mix of functional and abstracted sculptural pieces and their ceramics have a collectable following today.
Jean Lérat’s Oiseau triangle - €70,000 (£60,870) at Ader.
Market-fresh sale
Ader Nordmann (28% buyer’s premium) held a single-owner sale of their work, market fresh direct from the family, at the Drouot on November 24.
It presented a chronological snapshot spanning their early assays into pottery in the style of local pieces through to their later, increasingly sculptural and abstract oeuvre as well as featuring utilitarian pieces that were part of the potters’ daily lives.
The auction was accompanied by a detailed catalogue that is a reference work on the Lérats in its own right and a three-day pre-sale exhibition. It proved to be a great success.
A white-glove event, all 132 lots found buyers and copies of the catalogue sold out as bidders in the room, on the phone and online snapped up the collection for a premium-inclusive total of €1.3m.
Femme assise au grand chapeau by Jacqueline Lérat - €30,000 (£26,085) at Ader.
Many of the pieces sold for multiples of their estimates including the top-priced entry: Jean’s 19in (48cm) high lozenge shaped sculpture from 1965. Signed JJ Lérat in incised letters to the tricorn base, it overturned the €6000- 8000 estimate to realise €105,000 (£91,305).
Triangle format
Jean’s Oiseau triangle - a 2ft 11in x 4ft 3in (89cm x 1.31m) signed work from 1970 set on the original base - made the second-highest price of the auction at €70,000 (£60,870).
He had worked on his animal repertoire since he first started modelling, continually simplifying the forms to this abstract point.
Jacqueline’s more figurative Femme assise au grand chapeau from 1962 was another of the top-selling lots.
The 19½in (50cm) high figure which was signed and dated with incised letters to the back made €30,000 (£26,085) against an €8000-12,000 guide.
Prices were just as bullish for the earlier more utilitarian stoneware creations from the 1950s such as the 8in (20cm) glazed dish of rounded square form from 1956 shown here guided at €1200-1500 which realised €6000 (£5215).
