My Daum Crystal Xavier Froissart Biography

MY DAUM CRYSTAL COLLECTION: AUTOS, BOATS, TRAINS, PLANES, BIRDS, DOLPHINS, AND OTHER ANIMALS, LIMITED EDITIONS, CLOCKS, CATALOGS, AND MORE!

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XAVIER FROISSART, Designer

Xavier Froissart was the designer of the Signature series of Daum's crystal car collection. He has always been fascinated by cars and their design, and invented the crystal car concept in 1983 for Daum. A year later, in 1984, the Coupé Riviera was launched, the first crystal car Daum ever made. This item became a commercial success worldwide within a few months

The five first crystal cars (Riviera, Eldorado, Monoplace, Limousine, Grand Prix) Xavier designed were dream cars, a hommage to different periods in automobile history. Then it was decided with Daum to produce reproductions of famous cars, which Xavier was very involved with. See the list of cars he designed below.

With not only the cars, but also with the trains, boats, and planes Xavier designed for Daum, the idea was to introduce new themes in the domain of decorative objects, themes linked to the twenteth century and to the discovery of speed and movement.

Xavier designed the following pieces:

Automobiles	The Standard Large Cars (Coupe Riviera, Eldorado, Monoplace LeMans, Limousine Imperiale, Grand Prix, Mercedes 300SL, Bugatti 55 Roadster, Corvette Stingray, Jaguar E-Type, Porsche 911, Ferrari 250 GTO, Mercedes 500 SEL, BMW 750 IL).
	The Limited Edition Cars (53 Corvette, 53 Cadillac, Ford Mustang, Ford Thunderbird, Aston Martin DB5, Jaguar MKII).
	The Relief Cars (Monza, Deauville, Marly, L'Automobile, Manhattan clock).
	The Standard Alfa Romeos (Alfa 33, Alfa 155, Alfa 164)
	The Mercedes 500 SL custom production car.
Trains	Pacific, Brighton, Kleber, Nord-Express, Far-West, TGV.
Boats	Monaco (crystal on "pâte de verre" wave), Atlantis ("pâte de verre" sailboat hull), Régate (crystal single masted sailboat).
Planes	Spirit of Saint-Louis, Vol de Nuit (Nightflight, so named after St.Exupéry - pilot, and author of the book The Little Prince), Espace ("pâte de verre" space rocket, inspired by Concorde).
Other pieces	Surfer ("pâte de verre"), Montgolfière (hot air balloon), Circuit (small motorbike with rider), Manhattan clock, the Roche collection ("pâte de verre" ashtray, paperweight, clock and lamp), and the Trieste collection (vases, bowl and clock).

Xavier Froissart is a descendant of the Daum family : Antonin Daum (1864-1930), the founder of the Daum company with his brother Auguste, was Xavier's great-grandfather. Antonin's daughter Antoinette Daum (1899-1986), who married Pierre Froissart, was Xavier's paternal grandmother. Until the 1980s, the Daum company was managed succesively by Xavier's uncles Michel Daum, Jacques Daum and Pierre de Chérisey-Daum.

After Xavier studied art in Paris, Pierre de Chérisey-Daum invited him to work as a free-lance designer at Daum, and he created the Coupé Riviera which was his first crystal piece. Xavier had a close collaboration with Daum all through the 1980s and went on designing for them until the mid-1990s.

For more information about Xavier Froissart, please visit his very complete website: http://xavierfroissart.com/index.html.