Jean Derval first received an artistic education as a graphic designer and poster artist at the École des Arts Appliqués on rue Dupetit-Thouars in Paris. His vocation for ceramics came to him fortuitously while creating stoneware services for the Christofle goldsmiths.

In 1945, during his stay in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye, he learns the profession of ceramist in the Maubrou-Pigaglio workshop. In this workshop, with Camille Gendras, turner at Pigaglio, he is initiated to the turning and other ceramic techniques. He then stayed at La Borne, where he met Paul Beyer.

In 1947, Jean Derval joined his friends Robert Picault and Roger Capron in Vallauris where they had created a pottery workshop the previous year. The elegant world of amateurs and artists was at this time on the French Riviera around Picasso. In 1949, Jean Derval joined the famous Madoura workshop, where he worked with the Andalusian master for two years.

In 1951, he founded his own establishment, Le Portail. Instead of creating a real factory, he chose the difficult path of "unique pieces".
Derval offers a repertoire of domestic pottery, mainly of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic inspiration, reinterpreted from the lessons of cubism and abstraction. His Christian fervor also leads him to treat religious subjects such as representations of the Virgin and the saints. Finally, his Mediterranean roots leave an important place to the mythology of ancient Greece.

The end of the 1960s was marked by an evolution of taste towards stoneware with austere tints, at the expense of the colored earthenware favored by Jean Derval. He then turned to architectural ceramics with a vision of a sculptor rather than a potter.