Marcel Bouraine Art Deco Bronze Bird Bookends

These Art Deco Bookends by Marcel Bouraine are playful pieces made of silvered bronze with ivoroid beaks and mounted on Portoro marble. They are signed in the circular base M.Bouraine. This figure was also produced as a fancy automobile “mascot”, to be affixed to the hood of a car in the 1920s.

Bouraine did glorious sculptures of women often with classical themes such as Diana the Huntress,  as well as animals both majestic and whimsical. He has the distinction of being primariy self taught before the war years of 1914-1918 during which he was taken prisoner by the Germans  and interned in Switzerland. This was a program by which prisoners of both sides of the war were given a neutral place to recuperate and he produced a public monument in memory of the French Internees, many of which had been severely injured and were unable to return to their homes.

In Memory of the French Internees 1914-1918 by Bouraine

Swiss Monument

After the war he participated in many of the Parisian salons  as well as key Paris Expositions. Bouraine  created sculptures for several important foundries including Etling, Goldscheider and Le Verrier. In fact, he was a close friend of Max Le Verrier and Pierre Le Faguays. They had studied at the ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva and they often shared techniques working in a similar medium.  It is tempting to wonder just how much more he might have produced had he not lived thorugh two world wars that impacted a significant part of his career which had just begun at the time of WW1 and ended so soon after WW2.

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