François-Désiré Froment-Meurice

Who is François-Désiré Froment-Meurice?

François-Désiré Froment-Meurice was a French goldsmith, working in a free and naturalistic manner in the tradition of Mannerist and Baroque masters. One version of his Coupe des Vendanges, the "Harvest Cup", made in 1844, is conserved at the Musée du Louvre.

Born in Paris to a goldsmith of moderate reputation, François Froment, he was soon left fatherless. His mother remarried another jeweller, Pierre Meurice. François-Désiré Froment, who took his stepfather's name, having graduated from the Lycée Charlemagne was apprenticed as a ciseleur, or chaser, and developed his own renown. He took up the family workshop from 1832, with such success that he obtained two silver medals at the 1839 Exposition des produits de l'industrie— which gained him the appointment as orfèvre-joailler to the city of Paris— and a gold medal in the French Industrial Exposition of 1844. From 1849, he exhibited successfully in London and thenceforth across Europe.

Established near the Hôtel de Ville de Paris in 1828, he removed to the quartier of the Madeleine after 1848; during the revolutions of that year he served in the city's platoon of the Garde nationale. Under the Second Empire he maintained his showrooms at 50, rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré.