Jean Mayodon was born in Sèvres on December 29,1893.
His father was the general administrator of the Department store � Au Bon Marché � in Paris. This last encouraged him to follow his vocation for artistic creation.
During his youth Mayodon expressed the wish to become a painter. Thanks to Felix Bracquemond he was able to know all the artistic Intelligentsia of his time: Eugene Carrière, Henry Cros, Claude Monet, Bourdelle and Rodin to quote only a few.
Afterwards he carried out his studies at Michelet college. His father sent him to London. There, he carried out painted fabrics and projects of paper-painted.
He travelled, to Venice and then returned to Paris in 1912. Mayodon had a brief passage in the Jullian Academy and studied the technique of the classical Masters.
Later, Felix Bracquemond introduced him to Massoul and Dammousse, two ceramists of reputation.
At that time the Russian Ballet of Serge de Diaghilev was leading the way.
Near him the very famous dancer Isadora Duncan came to create a dance school. Eugene Carrière, Bourdelle and Rodin were fascinated by her erotic and iconoclast choreography and asked her to pose for them. Mayodon often went there and, fascinated as he was, produced an impressive succession of drawings, watercolours and paintings.
But even more than the set of themes which the famous dancer provided him through her fascination for Antique Greece, it is the whole artistic orientation of Mayodon which was determined by these meetings.
Mayodon would carry out his first tests of forms and enamels with glassmaker Henry Cros.
The work of Mayodon also carries the mark of other cultures: Persia, Egypt, Renaissance and classical Italy; other patterns: a whole bestiary of swans, gazelles, peacocks and birds which sometimes even occults the human figure.
But the leitmotiv of his creation remains those pantheist and dionysiaque dancing couples that seem to indulge in an endless motion.
Although far less noticed, erotism is an underlying but fundamental aspect of the artist’s creation.
Soon the quality of Mayodon’s work awakend the interest of decorators, architects and interior designers of great fame. Subes, Ruhlmann, Jules Leleu, Eugene Printz, Porteneuve, Jallot, or Dominique, would integrate his creations into the various spaces they were asked to decorate.
Moreover, we can emphasize his role at the Manufacture of Sèvres (Counsellor since 1934, then Director from 1941 on) and in various International events, among which the 1937 international exhibition where he was in charge of the general composition of the small living room in the House of Manufacture.
Mayodon died on the 27th of october 1967.
Numerous aforementioned passages are extract from Mr Gérard Landrot's book " MAYODON " edition Argus Valentine's 2004.
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