Jacques Kaplan, 83; absurdist furrier owned art gallery

Jacques Kaplan with a model in his New York salon. (Sam Falk/ The New York Times/file 1966)

NEW YORK - It was a memorable meeting between high art and animal hides in 1963. Frank Stella had painted black and yellow stripes on fur garments. Richard Anuszkiewicz had devised a bold geometric arrangement of white dots on a calfskin coat.

The smiling impresario behind this promotion, and many more stunts to come, was Jacques Kaplan, an absurdist furrier and art gallery owner who died July 16 at his home in Kent, Conn. He was 83. His son, Pascal, said the cause was cancer of the esophagus.

To the staid world of the mink stole, Mr. Kaplan brought a sense of mischief that appalled his conservative father, Georges, the owner of the family's fur salon on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan. But it attracted a new generation of less formal but still style-conscious customers.

"We have taken the trauma out of buying fur," Mr. Kaplan announced triumphantly. "The wilder they are, the faster they sell."

Eager to reach younger shoppers, and to amuse himself, Mr. Kaplan designed lower-priced garments in less-expensive material, such as wolf and rabbit, creating a category known as fun fur. He also introduced bizarre furs such as jaguar, wildebeest, and gayal, and created new uses for them.

He designed fur furniture, commissioned fur art, and hired such artists as Anuszkiewicz and Stella to help promote his bolder designs. Babe Paley, wife of CBS chairman William S. Paley, had Mr. Kaplan carpet her bathroom floor in Indian lamb's wool. A boutique the salon owned across the street sold fur by the yard, which inventive customers used to upholster car seats or line closets.

"He found ways to make the business fun and exciting and attract a new clientele," Pascal Kaplan said. "He liked to create what he called 'noise.' "

Mr. Jacques Kaplan, who pronounced his last name ka-PLAHN, in the French manner, was born in Paris in 1924, surrounded by an extended family of furriers. The business had been founded by his maternal grandfather, a Russian émigré, and his father conducted it with an unadventurous hand.

One day in the late 1950s, Mr. Kaplan wandered by chance into an art gallery near the fur salon and became so entranced by a painting there that he traded a fur for it. This flamboyant gesture brought him entree into the New York art world.

Art and fur marched hand in hand from then on.

In 1969, Mr. Kaplan sold the fur business to Kenton Corp., a company owned by Meshulam Riklis, who closed the store in 1972.