CRUEGE Pierre

Pierre-Hyppolite-Edouard Cruège was born on 4 December 1913 in Bordeaux. After training at the Ecole Supérieure de Talence in the perspective of Arts et Métiers where he learns metal techniques, he is directed towards the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Bordeaux where he is enrolled in 1932 in the Decorative Arts section of which René Buthaud is workshop master. Fascinated by all the disciplines taught, he flourished there and graduated in 1935 as a major. With a scholarship and a special prize offered by Maurice Dufrêne to a brilliant student of this section, he continued his studies in Paris at the Ecole Estienne and at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in the workshop of René Prou who noticed him. Having fulfilled his military obligations in the air force at Cazaux, where he was attached to the design office of the air armament, René Prou offered him to participate in his own agency during the preparatory work for the 1937 Universal Exhibition of Arts and Techniques, where he collaborated as well as in the fitting out of liners for the C.G.T. and the Cie des Wagons-lits, which allowed him to get close to the production of industrial furniture. He then created luxury furniture for the private installations of wealthy clients, combining wrought iron, stucco, lacquer, shagreen and precious wood, often inlaid with gilded bronzes in the modernist spirit of the 1940s.