Important Ceiling Light, supplied by Jean-Michel Frank, 1937

Jean-Michel Frank supplied three of the present plaster “shell” ceiling lights to Mrs. Elkins in 1937; she placed them individually in three of her interiors including ‘Easton’, the estate of Mrs. Evelyn Marshall Suarez (formerly Mrs. Evelyn Marshall Field), Muttontown, New York; the Lake Forest residence of Mrs. Violet Patten Wheeler; and in the Zellerbachs’ San Francisco vestibule. While the former two houses were respectively built in 1931 and 1934, Elkins often revisited her clients’ interiors in later years, as she did for Mrs. Wheeler following the death of her husband in 1937 and for Mrs. Suarez on the occasion of her second marriage, also in 1937.

Variously attributed to Alberto Giacometti, Diego Giacometti, and Jean-Michel Frank (who retailed the Giacometti brothers’ decorative arts as well as his own), the present model, with its meringue-like knotted folds, is reminiscent of the virtuosic plasterwork and abstracted nature forms of both Alberto Giacometti and Frank, in particular the latter’s various shell forms including his ‘Patelle’ ceiling light (circa 1935). The most compelling circumstantial evidence, two letters exchanged between Elkins and Frank in May 1937, points to authorship by the latter. In her letter dated 18 May, Mrs. Elkins asks Frank for “two white plaster shell ceiling lights like the last sketch you sent us”, one for Mrs. Suarez and one for Mrs. Elkins, the latter likely bound for the Zellerbach vestibule. In his response dated 28 May, Frank replies: “The two shell ceiling lights will be ready in a week — one for Mrs. Suarez, one for Mrs. Elkins. I hope this one is not the same David [Adler] ordered for Mrs. Wheeler — but I imagine if it were the same, you would not give me a San Francisco address.”