Mithé Espelt

Galerie Omagh has the privilege of presenting a rare and exclusive selection of mirrors by Mithé Espelt: iconic works that embody the essence of her artistic language. Each piece, carefully chosen for its quality, rarity, and integrity, stands as a testament to the refined craftsmanship and poetic sensibility of this discreet yet major figure in 20th-century French decorative arts.

Mithé Espelt, born Marie-Thérèse Espelt in 1923 in Lunel, in the Camargue region of southern France, was a French ceramicist whose work, long overlooked, is now being rediscovered and celebrated for its formal uniqueness and discreet elegance.

She came from a family of winemakers, but was raised in a culturally rich environment thanks to her grandfather Edmond Baissat, an artist and close friend of Frédéric Mistral, Jean Hugo, and other literary and artistic figures of southern France. At the age of sixteen, she began her artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier, then continued at the Fontcarrade school, where she studied ceramics with Émilie Decanis, before completing her education in Paris.

In the immediate postwar years, she briefly joined Nathalie Pol’s studio in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where she crafted ceramic buttons for haute couture. But it was back in Lunel, from 1946 onward, that she opened her own workshop and developed her distinctive language: a fusion of enamelled metalwork, wall jewelry, and interior objets d’art. Her creations, mirrors, boxes, and jewelry, were first distributed in Sète, Montpellier, Paris, and even as far as Martinique. She maintained close working relationships with a few trusted vendors, but consistently refused any promotional, institutional, or theoretical exposure.

Espelt made the radical decision not to sign her works, convinced that their visual coherence would speak for itself. She voluntarily withdrew from the artistic scene, preferring the solitude of her studio over public recognition.

It wasn’t until the early 2010s that her work began to be rediscovered, notably thanks to the efforts of collector Antoine Candau. He played a key role in documenting and sharing a remarkable body of work, defined by its independence, technical finesse, and symbolic depth. Today, her ornate mirrors, decorative boxes, and gold-laced ceramic jewels are exhibited by specialist galleries and sought after by collectors in France and abroad.

The posthumous recognition of Mithé Espelt reveals the quiet strength of an oeuvre rooted in intimacy, sensibility, and permanence, and reaffirms the enduring relevance of decorative arts as a distinct language of the 20th century.