Was Pierre Traverse Aladin?

Please note that the majority of this blog was written in late October and early November 2025 and new information has come to light on Monday 24th November 2025 which completely changes our position. The new information is below the heading “New Information (24/11/25)”. We could have simply deleted our theory below but a blog is a living document and thought showing our working might be of interest and make an interesting read to see how we gather information so rather than delete it, we have added on the new information to the bottom of this blog.

In our blog last year about Pierre Traverse we floated a claim that Traverse was the ceramic artist Aladin.

We hadn’t even considered the idea but for a surprise email from the great grandson of Pierre Traverse named Sebastien. As discussed in the last Traverse blog we were to receive a 120+ page document compiled by Sebastiens father, the grandson on Pierre Traverse (Pierres daughter Colettes son) before his death. He had spent the last 15 years of his life researching family records and compiling information about Pierre Traverse.

The document was fascinating and we would strongly suggest you give the previous blog a read where we detail his work from his very first known statue of a dog in 1908 up until 1935. We also plan a (very near) future blog where we will document his work after 1935.

On the last 2 pages of the document were a few pictures of ceramic pieces which I immediately recognised as being by Aladin having owned all of them at one time or another over the years.

We translated the French text to read as follows…

“Art Deco Objects
These small objects were made in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Many are signed; there are also unsigned “pirate” prints.
These are “food” works.”

Having been in this line of work for 40+ years we often find information on certain artists have been lost to history, mainly due to WW2 and the destruction of information and with the lack of information about Aladin, we assumed that was the case but now we had researched information from the family of Pierre traverse that changed everything.

It is worth noting that the pictures were taken by Sebastiens father of items he inherited, items in his possession which we believe is quite important.

We believe the phrase “food works” is used to imply items that were made relatively quickly and as a means to keep money coming in while he worked on his much larger pieces – “bread and butter”, as we say in the UK.

Given the information on the document we think it is likely that Aladin is a Pseudonym used by Traverse. We know that some artists would use Pseudonyms to differentiate between different materials used, possibly that is the case here. We won’t commit to saying this as fact as information is always changing but we carry a level of confidence as certain aspects are lining up quite well to lead us to believe Pierre Traverse could be the ceramic artist Aladin.

Last year when we first made contact we asked Sebastien to speak with his family to ask if he could confirm that Aladin was a Pseudonym used by Pierre Traverse. His great aunt had initially replied that it was the case. When asking Sebastien recently if he could double check he suggested that the memory of his great aunt might not be completely reliable. Sadly that means the trail ends here and that the only information we have that ties Traverse to Aladin is that from the document provided to us.

So what do we actually know of Aladin? We know Aladin made ceramic items in Paris and the items he produced include; Inkwells, Night Lights, Perfume Lamps, Perfume Atomisers, Flacons, Lamps, Powder Bowls, Wall Masks, Pots and Biscuit Boxes. We know Aladin worked in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. In addition to simply signing the items “Aladin”, Aladin items could also be stamped with Aladin Luxe or A.L. With very few exceptions (from our own experience anyway), nearly all Aladin ceramic items contain depictions of people.

We appreciate that the information we have to reach our “conclusion” is limited. We do not have, nor know what the “pirate” prints are but an assumption would be that documents were found supporting our claim, maybe some early sketches of ceramic designs, that were not included in the document sent to us. We cannot say if the “food works” were a phrase used by Sebastiens father, his mother Colette or Pierre himself.

We are grateful to Sebastians father for providing the information he has done and wish he could have had an idea of the impact this footnote would have in the wider community of the art deco world.

We encourage anyone with information about Aladin that is not provided in this or our other blog on Pierre Traverse to please contact us with. We really would like to gain as much information on this topic as possible. We are happy to be proven wrong if that means more information is uncovered and shared.

New Information (24/11/25)

Having written our previous Blog on Traverse where we made the original claim and the blog above which was days away from publishing, we were sent a link to an auction by Sebastien. The auction contains the famous Atlante statue by Traverse and is being sold by the family of “Mr Clain”. The name Mr Clain is completely new to us, we’ve never heard it before today. Under the notes section on the auction it states that Mr. Clain was the founder of the Aladin brand, which produced a number of ceramic objets d’art in the 1920s-1930s, including subjects created by Pierre Traverse and produced in porcelain.

We can now state that we do not believe Pierre Traverse is Aladin but rather that Traverse produced works for the Aladin company.

If anyone is able to give us any information about the Aladin company or Mr Clain, we’d be extremely grateful and will gladly produce a further blog on this subject and add the information provided to our information on artists pages. We haven’t been able to verify the information on Mr Clain or the Aladin company but at this time, it seems likely that the information provided is correct.

For a while we were quite confident that we had found something really interesting linking Traverse and Aladin… and to a point, we have. We don’t believe it was widely known that Pierre Traverse made works for Aladin and hopefully through this blog we will be able to spread that knowledge.

You may believe that doing research to reach a conclusion only to have it turned on its head with one minor footnote in an auction listing would be deflating but quite the opposite. We have now discovered a new name to add to our information on artists page and can say that Pierre Traverse created ceramic works for the Aladin company.

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