author
1865–1931
A French art historian and lecturer with a deep love of decorative art, he spent much of his career studying beautiful objects and the craft behind them. His surviving work and archives show a curious, well-traveled writer who moved easily between scholarship, collecting, and visual culture.
Georges Constantin Pélissier (1865–1931) was a French art historian, lecturer, and writer associated with Tiffany & Company in both Paris and New York, where he worked as a cultural advisor and purchasing clerk. Sources from the Getty Research Institute and the Online Archive of California describe him as someone who devoted much of his life to the promotion and study of the decorative arts.
He published writings on decorative objects, art theory, and artists, and is especially remembered today for work connected to design and craftsmanship. One of his known books, A Few Remarks Concerning Makers of Singing Bird Boxes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1910), reflects his interest in finely made objects and the history behind them.
Pélissier also left behind a large archive of photographs and papers, much of it gathered during extensive travels. That collection includes images of architecture, gardens, city views, decorative arts, and portraits, suggesting a restless, observant mind with a strong visual sense as well as a scholarly one.