All his life, the Poet drew as much as he wrote, his style is widely known : drawings, decors, lithographies, prints, sculptures, frescoes… This work is considerable.
In 1957, he met Marie Madeline Jolly and Philippe Madeline, a couple of artists. In their workshop, he creates more than 300 ceramics, draws poem- objects and jewels.
The ceramics shown on this website all belong to the original edition, for which models were created at the “Madeline-Jolly” workshop as Jean Cocteau was alive from the end of 1957 until 1963, year of his death.

…I visited the uncultivated terraces of an exquisite pottery above Villefranche. Wild lilacs, irises and wallflowers perfume the air. A young baker from Lenain, powdered with plaster, fills the ovens with incombustible flat cakes made by Marie-Madeleine as a feast for the eyes. All this, in the invigorating hilltop air, resembles a lonely farm untouched by the miasmas of modern life…

Jean Cocteau
Extracts of an interview for the newspaper “la vie des métiers » ; “L’artisan d’art » edition 1958

He said and wrote that he was "proud to have become an artisan-ceramist". This was a great tribute to our craft. Let us say that he went through it, retaining only what was essential, never halting at any of the various well-tried processes and creating his own style, spare and unadorned, simply "tatooing the clay". In this field, he has remained a brilliant designer admired by all, simply using other materials to express himself.

Philippe Madeline
Catalogue raisonné des poteries de Jean Cocteau

…Pottery has saved my life ! It stops me from using ink, which has become too dangerous, since everything we write is systematically deformed by our readers…
…Picasso told me that if I put a ceramic in the kiln, I would be lost. But I have always taken great pleasure in losing myself…

Description de l'image

“Grand chèvre-cou” Vase – 1958

Height: 60 cm
20 copies

Jean Cocteau showing the work “Les trois yeux” 1958

The favourite work of his friend Pablo Picasso.

Jean Cocteau, Marie Madeleine Jolly and Philippe Madeline getting-out of the workshop in Villefranche sur Mer.