Pierre-François Jumeau, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetPierre-François Jumeau
French dollmaker
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Rémalard, Normandy, France
About Pierre-François Jumeau
- Pierre-François Jumeau (31 October 1811 Rémalard – 13 August 1895 Boulevard Beaumarchais, Paris), was the founder of Jumeau.
- Jumeau was an 1840s French firm that produced bisque dolls and china dolls.
- His second son Emile-Louis Jumeau, born in 1843, began assuming management of the company in the 1870s. Pierre-François's family owned a fabric shop in Rémalard, south-west of Paris, in 1837.
- On a business trip to Paris he met and eventually married in January 1841 the niece of one of the few dollmakers in France, Lucius-Junius Herissey.
- Jumeau gained invaluable experience by joining the Herissey business, which had good prospects due to the improved French economy and the growth of international markets. In 1841 Jumeau was in partnership with Louis-Desire Belton, but started his own business a few years later after the death of his wife in 1844.
- By 1848 Jumeau had become the foremost doll manufacturer, had won a bronze medal at the 1849 Paris Exposition and was invited in 1851 to take part in the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London where he won a First Place Medal, the dresses being singled out for praise.
- The Jumeau dolls were widely acclaimed, winning numerous awards at international exhibitions.
- The first dolls were papier-mâché and were unmarked, causing present-day attribution problems, so that only a small number of Jumeau dolls made before the 1870s can be identified with certainty.
- In the 1850s glazed porcelain dolls had been added to the firm's inventory, but the bisque dolls were its greatest success, and the company acquired a reputation for the beauty, grace, elegance and quality of its products.In 1872, Pierre-François, unhappy with the dolls' heads from Germany, started a porcelain factory at Montreuil to produce his own heads and began supplying other dollmakers. From his marriage to Adèle Amélie Aumoitte, Pierre-François produced two children, Georges Eugène (1841–1873) and Emile (born 18 April 1843).
- Adèle died on 16 May 1843 following Emile's birth.
- In 1854, Pierre-François married Adélaïde Elisa Mayo who died in 1888.
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