Victor Hugo’s great-grandson, Jean Hugo (1894-1985) was fascinated from an early age by theatre design. He made his name in 1921 with his sets and costumes for Jean Cocteau’s Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, and later designed productions for Leonide Massine, and for the Comédie Française. He also painted in oils and watercolours, generally acknowledged as a master of the miniature. Having been a familiar figure at Parisian parties between the wars, devising masks and fancy-dress costumes, he later moved to the South of France, where he wrote his memoirs, Avant d’oublier (Before I Forget).

For the 1946 label, Jean Hugo used the story of the Flood: the dove returning to the Ark, a symbol of the first year of peace.