Champagne bucket

Luc Lanel was a ceramicist by training and in charge of the Christofle design studio in the 1920s and 1930s. Christofle provided the entire silverware for the liner Normandie , the flag ship of the French Line before the Second World War, which sailed between Le Havre and New York. The Normandie measured 313 metres overall, had a beam of 36 metres and displaced 83,423 tons. She took to the seas on May 5, 1935 with a crew of 1,320 including 200 cooks, pastry cooks and butchers, and 700 stateroom personnel. She could accommodate 2,230 passengers. The total amount of silverware supplied to the liner by Christofle totalled 45,000 pieces. The Normandie was stranded in New York at the outbreak of

Champagne bucket · Paris · 1933-1935. Electroplated nickel silver. By Luc Lanel. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.