DES CUILLERES ET DES HOMMES

Description

“Being born with a teaspoon gold in the mouth“. “Swallowing his spoon.” Here are two popular expressions that suggest that this small everyday object accompanies human life from birth to death. Whether a single utensil, a prestigious object or a ritual instrument, the spoon is present on five continents, in all civilizations, forever. The diversity of materials used and the proliferation of its forms make it a work of art that reflects the creative strength of men.

This book offers a trip around the world with the sole guide the spoon: breakfast everyday object, present in all civilizations since ancient times. The large collection of spoons from the European People’s art, dan tribes Zulu or Zaire peoples, to those of Sumatra Southeast Asia, collected over the years by Serge Le Guennan is result of a long research, enriched meetings and chances, with the theme of this specialist taste for beauty and evocative selected objects and reflects the variety of customs and traditions but also the tastes of different peoples. Produced on five continents, rich in their execution or simplified to the extreme, they testify to the inexhaustible imagination of man through the use of extremely varied materials, wood shellfish through ivory. The book, divided into five chapters – Europe, Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania – presents a selection of 130 spoons based on a purely aesthetic criterion and brings together objects from different periods: the oldest date from the eighth century but much of it is linked to primitive arts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The outlook on the different populations passes through drawings from nature Didier Derre artist who for nearly two years, following the spirit of the nineteenth Travel drawings, managed to convey the importance of detail and the beauty of this simple object everyday. Serge Guennan is the merchant and collector of primitive art since 1975. His collection is in his gallery “Gallery SL” in Paris and some of its objects are exhibited in major museums such as the Musée du Quai Branly Museum Barbier-Mueller.