Lot 40
PAUL-FRANÇOIS BERTHOUD (1870-1939)
CHRYSALIDE PLANTER
Auction: Art Nouveau & Art Deco | Lots 17 to 118 | 25 June 2026 from 2pm
Description
designed 1902
bronze, copper plating, with tin liner
signed in cast Berthaud, inscribed SALON DE 1902, founders mark J.H.F. Fondeur. Paris COPYRIGHT BY BERTHAUD 1902, bears plaque verso inscribed HERRN LUDWIG METZL ZUM 25-JAHRIGE JUBILAUM DIE St. Petersburger Zeitung SEPTEMBER 1903.
Dimensions
44.2cm high
Footnote
Duncan, A., The Paris Salons 1895-1914, Volume V: Objets D' Art & Metalware, Woodbridge, 1999, p. 86 (similar example illustrated)
The plaque on this planter presumably commemorates a gift to or from Mr Ludwig Metzl, on the 25th anniversary of his involvement with the St. Petersburgische Zeitung, a German-language newspaper published in Saint Petersburg in the Russian Empire from 1727 until its closure in 1915.
Metzl (1854–1942) was born in Prague and became a prominent advertising entrepreneur and publisher in the Russian Empire. In 1878, he and his brother Ernst founded L. Metzl & Co. in St. Petersburg, building it into an advertising network that controlled much of the Russian newspaper advertising market and operated internationally. Metzl also published business journals and the literary magazine Epocha. After Ernst’s death in 1900, Ludwig expanded the company further before losing much of his business during the anti-German unrest and the Russian Revolution. He later settled in Paris, where he died in 1942.