Mignon Faget is a jewelry designer based in her native New Orleans, Louisiana. Her family settled in the city in the late 18th century after leaving Saint Domingue. The painter Jacqueline Humphries is her daughter. Jewelry designer John Humphries is her son.
“Every New Orleans Lady",so it's said, owns at least one piece of Mignon Faget jewelry, adornment as central to a lady's wardrobe in this city as a piece from Tiffany & Co. in New York." [1]
Mignon Faget attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart as a young woman. She credits much of her talent to her years at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College where she graduated in 1955 with a BFA and a concentration in sculpture. While at Newcomb College she studied under Jules Struppeck (1915-1993). Pat Travigno (b.1922) and Sarah "Sadie" Irvine (1887-1970.) Faget feels a course entitled "design in nature" taught by Robert Durant "Robin" Feild (1893-1979) had a major influence on her future career. She additionally studied at L'Atelier de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and The Parsons School of Design in New York and she studied print making at St. Mary's Dominican College in New Orleans.. [2]
She launched her first ready-to-wear line in 1969 in a studio in the Riverbend neighborhood of New Orleans. She renovated a barge board cottage and it became the early headquarters housing her studio, jewelry workshop and retail gallery for many years. [3] In 1997, she renovated a neo-classical former bank building to house her company, in addition to galleries in New Orleans, Metairie, and Baton Rouge. After opening her new facility, she donated her original location on Dublin Street to the Preservation Resource Center. [4]
Her jewelry is often inspired by New Orleans architecture and culture or based on forms in nature, many from her Louisiana home. Faget designs by collections and has created works entitled Sea, Romanesque Return, Zea, Animal Crackers, Armament, Schema, Cruxx, Fences, Pylon, Ironworks and Hive, to name just a few. In her career Mignon Faget has designed thousands of pieces of jewelry.
She fabricates in gold, sterling silver, bronze, precious, and semi-precious stones. She also designs items for personal and home adornment and gifts.
Faget has designed special commissioned designs for organizations such as Save Our Cemeteries, Project Lazarus, the NO AIDS Task Force, the Preservation Resource Center, Desire NOLA, Woodlands Trail and Park, H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, The Krewe of Muses, The Krewe of Bacchus, The Stratford Club, The New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra, The New Orleans Museum of Art and The School of Design, to name a few. She has also designed one-of-a-kind special designs for private collectors.
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Mignon Faget's uptown gallery was one of the first businesses to re-open. She re-opened promoting the Fleur de Lis as the symbol of "rebirth" and donated a percentage of sales from the sale of her Fleur de Lis jewelry to Louisiana Rebirth through the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation. The efforts raised over $150,000.00 in eighteen months - dedicated to artists and arts organizations. [5] [6]
In 2010 following the explosion of BP's Deep Water Horizon oil well she assembled a Gulf Coast collection from past designs inspired by the Gulf, a seed bank for her work. Pins and pendants reflecting pelicans, oysters and fish from the Gulf of Mexico were worn on black ribbons in the tradition of mourning jewelry. This effort is ongoing as of December 2011 and has raised nearly $100,000.00 to date.
In fall of 2010 Mignon Faget was honored with a retrospective exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection entitled Mignon Faget: A Life in Art and DesignItalic text. The exhibition opened at the Louisiana State Museum Capitol Park in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November of 2011.
Mignon Faget continues to operate her three galleries in New Orleans at Lakeside Shopping Center, The Shops at Canal Place and at 3801 Magazine Street just a few blocks from her headquarter offices, studio and workshop. She also has an online gallery at www.mignonfaget.com