La jolie souris / The pretty mouse, 1970
Boris Tabacoff

Boris Tabacoff (Bulgaria 1927-1985 France) is a Bulgarian designer who is one of the artists of the Post-War School of Paris (1945-2000). “He was the very first designer from the Ecole de Paris after the war to create furniture and objects in plexiglass.

Creator of the first Cardin Plexiglas furniture. He benefits from the Glorious Thirties in France and his workshop creates and manufactures Design de Cardin. It is very present in the art magazines of the 60s and 70s thanks to Cardin using plexiglass for the edition of bathtubs, chairs, tables, and the famous Cardin clocks, as well as all kinds of prestigious desks in plexiglass.

Editions tabacoff and editons cardin. Tabacoff creates prototypes that he has published by many publishers during Les Trente Glorieuses as well as those of Cardin. The publishers market certain prototypes in limited edition editions of 50 copies, such as The Cube Armchair, MMM “Spheres", Table, chairs, armchairs, plexiglass editions.

Tabacoff Original Prototypes. A unique and original work of art, it is still created at the Scrive Tabacoff workshop, 6, rue de Lanneau by Tabacoff in the 1960s and 1970s. These include: La table Menorah, I, La Table Menorah 2, La Table Forest, The Spider Armchair, The Roman Armchair.

Fake Tabacoff and expertise. Many fakes and copies circulate and are sold because of the plexiglass industries. Since 2015, archives allow expertise at PARIS Service Expertise Tabacoff, 6, rue de Lanneau, Paris.

Glassware Tabacoff Baccarat, Editions sauvage Tabacoff. Baccarat. As Tabacoff wanted to create his more contemporary line of glassware for the innovating Germans and Austrians, he created prototypes and asked glassblowers to make them secretly at Baccarat and sold them under the counter.

Editions Tabacoff Direction Baccarat. “Narcisse" is an excellent limited edition glassware edition, Baccarat editions. Sculptures, Objects and Works of Art Tabacoff Plexiglass, Resin, Cement, New Materials. Tabacoff also uses for its sculpture of the 50s, the wood "Black Virgin", the resin, 70s, "Love" "Couple" "Golden lamp", the resin "The rat", "the pink crab", "The woman forest", smoked plexiglass, "The Holy Spirit" Transparent plexiglass Etc.

Tabacoff arrives at the studio of the sculptor Scrive.

Historically Tabacoff arrived in Paris in the 1950s, he had not yet found his way into the “Post-War School of Paris" as a sculptor or craftsman. He went to a renowned sculptor's workshop, created by the sculptor Philippe Scrive, in a street marked by an alignment like the Rue de Seine was then. Since 1948 Scrive has been rehabilitating this unhealthy place, where no one wants to live, with his lumberjack hands, in order to accommodate his children and his wife, the abstract painter Françoise Staar (1933-2011) who live cramped on the first floor, while he helps his sculptor friends without a workshop to reach this poor place which overlooks the street, but which becomes convivial like Scrive and where up to 22 Post-War sculptor friends from all over the world share the art of sculpture and the hope of better days. Scrive is peaceful, generous, idealistic, he asks for his French nationality and the trap closes on him when in 1954 the Algerian War breaks out.

The sculpture workshop Scrive is already very famous, when the death in the heart it must leave it for the war and the blood of the brothers. Military service is compulsory, conscientious objection not recognised, the rebellious considered deserters, a soldier of refusal he refuses to bear arms, his paternity of two children does not free him.

He must suffer in the breath of death for 28 months under the bullets. In despair, Scrive leaves his family destitute and his sculptor disciples distraught. Scrive saw the agony, Tabacoff gave him the kiss of betrayal, exhorted him, "Forget your disciples, entrust me with the keys to your world, I'll take care of everything!" Desperate Scrive leaves for the war, he who had come to share "The Post-War Art of the School of Paris"

And the inhuman resumes his litany, that of Picasso who grows fat in Paris and betrays Max Jacob who died in the camp, Apollinaire de Kostrowitzky, trepanned on the forehead while selling the works of his “friends". Or, like in the good old days of 39-45 when Rue de Bièvre the refugees from the camps thrown out on the street by an opportunist for a few Francs.

Tabacoff immediately seizes the Scrive workshop by an administrative ruse and obtains a new lease signed by the owner under the name of Tabacoff, instead of Scrive's lease. Scrive lives two years under murderous bullets when Tabacoff prospers. Returning from Algeria Scrive who sacrificed two years of his life for Paris returns from the war in Algeria without a valiant penny and without means of taking legal action.

This is how Tabacoff brings about the ruin of Scrive and thrives on his misfortune. Scrive is illegally expropriated with his family, and it is well after clashes and misfortunes that they find refuge in Fontenay aux Roses.

Excerpt from "Post-War Art of the School of Paris (1945-2000) Boris Tabacoff", Lise Cormery, Michelangelo Publications, Paris, 2020." In 1988 Scrive told Lise Cormery the story of After -Forgotten War of the Atelier du Sculpteur Scrive, looted by the Designer Tabacoff.

She then organized in tribute to her courage for the School of Paris and the excellence of her sculptural and architectural work "Scrive 40 years 1948-1988 in Paris", at her Gallery, 6, rue de Lanneau and at the Cultural Center of Quebec from Paris. »