In writing the comment below, in which “SIGNATURE” is often mentioned, a thought popped into my mind:
There are people who buy “designer” items just to show off a luxury good that is not accessible to everyone, or others convinced by a sophisticated advertising campaign that they cannot do without that particular product..
But fortunately there are also products that are sold ONLY FOR THEIR QUALITY, BEAUTY, TRUE CONSISTENCY, AESTHETICAL AND MATERIAL.
WELL, CERTAINLY THE FIREPLACES DESIGNED AND PRODUCED BY MAJORELLE ARE PART OF THE LATTER, AND UNFORTUNATELY, INCREASINGLY SCARCE, GENUS.
DESIGN BYARCH. LOUIS MAJORELLE, A SCULPTURE UNDOUBTEDLY MADE IN NANCY IN THE THEN “MAISON MAJORELLE”, A WORK OF THE LAST PERIOD (THE MINIMALIST ONE, CIRCA 1915-1925) OF ACTIVITY OF THIS GENTLEMAN, WHO WAS, FROM THE LAST DECADES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE FIRST DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE ONLY “DESIGNER ” (AT LEAST IN THE MEANING THAT WE MEN BORN IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY GIVE TO THIS WORD). OUR LOUIS, IN FACT, AS OPPOSED TO ALL HIS COLLEAGUES WHO SOLD THEIR DESIGNS TO MANUFACTURERS WHO WOULD THEN PHYSICALLY MAKE THEM, OUR LOUIS, I SAID, INVENTED, PLANNED AND DESIGNED WHAT HE WOULD THEN DIRECTLY MAKE IN HIS WORLD-FAMOUS “FACTORY,” THE “MAISON MAJORELLE”, WHOSE HISTORY YOU WILL READ AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.
IF TODAY THERE ARE SO MANY “SIGNATURES” THAT THEY ARE NOW CONSIDERED OVERUSED, IN THE ART NOUVEAU PERIOD THERE WAS ONLY ONE SIGNATURE, THAT OF MAJORELLE LOUIS.
MORE THAN A “FIREPLACE MANTEL,” THIS SCULPTURAL WORK IS, IN FACT, A REAL SCULPTURE, CARVED FROM HUGE BLOCKS OF MARBLE AND NOT, AS IN 99% OF THE FIREPLACES ON THE MARKET, FROM ASSEMBLAGES OF MORE OR LESS THIN MARBLE SLABS.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT FEATURE LIES IN THE USE OF A VERY SPECIAL MARBLE, A ROUGE ROYAL TAKEN FROM THE SAME QUARRY (BUT REALLY THE SAME ONE, EH..) FROM WHICH THE ROUGE ROYAL USED FOR VERSAILLES WAS EXTRACTED , WHERE THIS MARBLE WAS PROFITED TO MAKE FLOORS, WALL TILES, STAIRCASES AND, OF COURSE, FIREPLACES.
WHEN I THINK THAT MODERN (IN THE SENSE OF “ERUPTED TODAY BY A MODERN NUMERICALLY CONTROLLED PANTOGRAPH”) MARBLE FIREPLACE FRAMES COST AS MUCH AS THE WORK OF GENIUS AND CRAFTSMANSHIP PROPOSED HERE, I THINK THAT, IN THIS HISTORICAL ERA, SOMETHING IS NOT GOING RIGHT.
SOME NOTES ON THE LIFE AND WORKS OF DESIGNER LOUIS MAJORELLE.
French designer Louis Majorelle was born in Toul, near Nancy, in 1859. His father, Auguste, who also designed elegant and highly original furniture, had his own factory, “Maison Majorelle,” in Nancy.
Louis Majorelle studied painting from 1877 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris with master Jean-François Millet, but after his father died, he returned to Nancy in 1879 and took over the family business.
Beginning in the following years, however, Louis Majorelle fell increasingly under the influence of the new Art Nouveau art forms, which had been introduced in Nancy specifically by glass designers.
So Louis Majorelle, decided to set up, using his father's factory, a large arts and crafts store in which to offer a little bit of everything related to decorating a home, from lamps to furniture, from fireplaces to a wide variety of furnishings.
In 1900 Majorelle achieved enormous success at the “Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Paris” (the Exposition for which the Eiffel Tower was built, to be clear..) by presenting a complete “home interior” of hers.
His designs became more and more happily extravagant and invested every field of furnishings, even going so far as to design and produce metal objects such as the feet and clasps of glass chandeliers or the “embrasse” that tighten curtains.
In 1901, a number of Art nouveau firms and workshops joined our Louis and his factory to form the very famous “École de Nancy.”
Emile Gallé, just to name one of the designers of that school, was its first “bridgehead.”
In 1916, during World War I, the Majorelle factory was destroyed by fire. Louis Majorelle fled to Paris, returned to Nancy when the war was over and rebuilt the old factory .
In 1920 his design became increasingly minimalist and formal, corresponding to the new stylistic trend along with Art Deco.
In 1925 Majorelle again participated in the “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Moderns” in Paris, still enjoying considerable success more than thirty years after his first participation, a sign that his works were not ephemeral dreams but had their own intrinsic and lasting value.
Louis Majorelle died in 1926, Alfred Lévy became director of Maison Majorelle, a house that continued to conceive and produce artistic objects using the most important architects and designers of the time, until its year of closure, 1956.
