DAVID GUÉRON – INTERNATIONAL (AND ENIGMATIC!) MAN OF MYSTERY

It’s eight months or so since we listed our first piece of art glass produced by Verrerie d’Art Degué, and it’s a measure of the scarcity of their work that only now are we able to present the second and third examples of their distinctive art glass for your consideration. 

 

The company led a brief and somewhat tempestuous existence during the 1920’s and 30’s before falling victim to the same pre-war economic malaises which assailed many French businesses, and they’re only now really starting to be considered as having been properly major players in the marketplace which was dominated by Schneider, Daum, Galle and the likes. This is due, in no small part, to the relative lack of information circulating about the man behind the company, David Guéron, and what few snippets there are, seem to be witlessly regurgitated by rote, so it’s high time that we put some flesh on the bones of this rather maligned character. 

 

You will often see Guéron described as ‘enigmatic’ which seems to be research shorthand for ‘generally unknowable’, as if the admission of a lack of knowledge is being set out as sufficient in its own right – we don’t know anything about the man, which tells you everything you need to know about him – very peculiar! My use of the word in the title of this piece is wholly facetious…

 

He was born to Spanish-Jewish parentage in 1892 in a place which, to be fair, lends itself perfectly to the whole air of mystery – Adrianople. Now known as Edirne, it’s a city in the northwest extremity of Turkey in that curious part of the country north of the Sea of Marmara, situated on continental Europe and near to the convergence of the Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish borders. Gloriously for sapiophiles – and in the manner of oft-espoused areas of deforestation – this, well, enigmatic little enclave makes up ‘an area about the size of Wales’.

 

Now – Guéron’s childhood is a proper mystery, and he first surfaces just before the First World War when in his twenties, working as a tutor at an establishment called L’Ecole Normale Orientale near Paris. This seems to have been under the auspices of L’Alliance Israelite Universelle, which essentially administered Jewish schools around the Mediterranean having opened one of its earliest establishments in Adrianople (1867), which perhaps explains Guéron’s affiliation.

 

A recurring element of the aforementioned Guéron stories is that, at the outbreak of war, he joined the French Foreign Legion (in common with other students and staff from his school). This is invariably cited as being “in order to escape from a scandal” – but this strikes me as being nothing more than a repetition of the age-old trope that the Legion was often seen as the last bastion of men who had something to hide, whereas in reality it would simply have been the first port of call for any non-French citizens who wished to sign up and do their duty. Far from being an unattested figure who hid himself away under the Legion’s cloak of anonymity, Guéron was promoted to Corporal, and was cited in the despatches of his 2ndMarching Regiment, for ‘enthusiasm and contempt for danger’ in the occupation of German trenches during operations around Givenchy-en-Gohelle near Lens during June of 1915. He was wounded during this action and invalided out of the army. As an aside, the futility of the whole war is well illustrated by the fact that nearly two years later the same tract of land was still being fought over, up to the point of the Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge immediately to the south in 1917.

 

Guéron went back to his former position at the Parisian school – at least for a short time – on his return to civilian life, but then took his first step into glassmaking. He acquired a former crystal glass factory in Compiègne to the north west of the capital, which had formerly specialised in the production of perfume bottles and set up a company trading as Cristalleries de Compiègne, producing vases, atomizers, lampshades and ‘other house-wares’. The early work with lampshades was to pave the way for his future in the trade, as it was his initial foray in to ‘architectural glass’ production, and the manufacture of many lamps and light fittings. This would result in his partnership with Edouard Cazaux, the establishment of Verrerie d’Art Degué, the (albeit short-term) commercial success of the company and – ultimately – the prestigious commission to produce 6,000 cut-glass panels for the fitting-out of France’s national pride, the liner Normandie. Our previous article outlines these latter stages of Guéron’s career which, having been derailed by the aforementioned financial travails, saw him eventually declared insolvent in August of 1936, owning 20,000 francs in unpaid taxes. Bankrupted, and with another war looming, he fled from France – no doubt fearful of what may lay in wait as a result of his Jewish heritage under the growing Nazi threat.

 

Unfortunately, without his business to sustain him, Guéron disappeared into obscurity to such an extent that I have thus far been unable to establish the whereabouts of his death in 1950 (not during the course of the war, as we have previously suggested), though it has been mooted that he had returned to France by this time. Anyway, I hope that this has given you a little more insight into a man who was quite clearly a very capable designer and craftsman, and who deserves to be remembered as something a little more edifying that just having been ‘engimatic’.

 

http://scotant.uk/David_Gueron