Maree

^{Click to enlarge}

From 'House of Treasures - Canterbury Museum 150^th Anniversary'

^{Click to enlarge}

For the past six years, François Junod has collaborated with Van Cleef & Arpels on its Extraordinary Objects series. The piece that magicked the partnership to life in 2017 was the Fée Ondine, a bejewelled sleeping fairy atop an enamelled lily pad. On demand, the gentle ripple of the lily pad awakens the fairy, who flaps her wings as the flower opens to reveal a fluttering butterfly...

^{The 18th-century lost art that’s being revived in a fantastical Swiss workshop - Flowers, butterflies, even the poet Alexander Pushkin all spring into life at the hands of François Junod, maker of automatons - Telegraph 13 June 2023}

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s imperishably strange classic 'The Little Prince', from 1943, now has its first full-length animated version, presented by Netflix. This is the story of an aviator who crashes in the Sahara and there discovers a holy-innocent “prince” from another planet (or rather asteroid) who has stories to tell about his upbringing and his adventures all across the galaxy.

The Little Prince appears to understand the Aviator in the way that no-one did in the Aviator’s own childhood. This animation grafts a new narrative level on the existing story, effectively repurposing it as a flashback: the Aviator is now an old guy who befriends a lonely little girl who has just moved in next door.

She finds pages of his handwritten story, and he tells her all about it – while becoming her best and only friend...

^{Guardian - 5 August 2016}