IN PRECIOUS AND WARM AND CANDID AND FASCINIOUS ( you can tell I'm in love with it, huh?!) CALACATTA MARBLE (APPEARING TO THE CARRARA STATUARY FAMILY), THIS ART NOUVEAU HISTORIC FIREPLACE IS EASILY RELATABLE TO THE DESIGN OF ARCHITECT LOUIS MAJORELLE.
Well, here it becomes necessary to say two things about this Mr. Majorelle, to the greater understanding of what we shall see or read in this commentary of mine, a commentary that promises to be as long as a novel by Umberto Eco because I had been waiting (with real anxiety) for a long time to have the time to write about this indisputable WORK OF ART and now that I am here, I shall be happy to be...a river of words.
Architect Louis Majorelle was born in Nancy in 1859 to Auguste, an important nineteenth-century furniture manufacturer, from whom he inherited the factory and the desire to build the objects (furniture, lamps, metal and glass objects, fireplaces etc..) that he designed. Just to understand his artistic importance, we will say that Louis is a disciple and collaborator of Emile Gallé, the king of crystal (whom our Louis will surpass in technique), discovers and encourages Henri Sauvage (the most famous French architect between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), builds Villa Majorelle, the Art Nouveau property par excellence, a property that, today turned into a museum, represents a cornucopia for young architects from all over the world eager to study Art Nouveau. To finish I will say that our Louis founded (together with Gallé) the “Ecole de Nancy,” a veritable hotbed of the most important European artists of that era.
Up to here, and obviously in broad strokes, the universally known aspect of our Louis..
But there is another, of aspects, that seems to interest no one, perhaps because it concerns a “commercial” perspective and not purely, or only, an artistic one:
Majorelle can be considered as the only "Valentino" of the Art Nouveau period.
And let me elaborate: While all of his fellow “designers” (architects or artists in general) produced ideas and designs (in essence, blueprints) that they then sold for two liras to the actual manufacturers, He, his designs materialized them in his factory and then sold his production directly, making, I believe, not only an important profit, but also the diffusion of his brand and name in the world arena.
He really produced everything besides the furniture and fireplaces we have already mentioned. From “embrasses” for curtains to doorknobs, from bronze decorations for chandeliers to abat-jours of every shape and size, from clocks to ceramics, from textiles to leather goods... and so on.
Not all of his production was made directly in his factory (Maison Majorelle, in Nancy..), indeed I think it is safe to say that, furniture production aside, most of his splendid ideas were made through collaboration with workshops of great craftsmanship.
So much so that the mantel I am presenting here was, most likely, made by a Carrara sculpture workshop, the quality seems to be that of Italy, difficult to come across equal or even similar sculptural level in the land of France.
I SPENT MOST OF THE AVAILABLE SPACE TALKING ABOUT THE DESIGNER OF THIS FIREPLACE BOTH BECAUSE THE FIREPLACE ITSELF LOOKS GREAT ON ITS OWN AND BECAUSE, IN TALKING TO YOU ABOUT OUR LOUIS I TRIED TO COMMUNICATE TO YOU “THE SOUL” OF THIS ART OBJECT BEFORE ITS OUTWARD APPEARANCE.
AGREED, NOW TO THE ACTUAL COMMENTARY ON THE FIREPLACE.
In my lifetime I have owned, this specimen included, perhaps 7 or 8 Majorelle fireplaces, in essence, one every 7 or 8 years of my work among antique fireplaces, which gives an idea of their extreme difficulty in being found. I write how difficult it is to be able to propose such an important and consequently in-demand object of art to customers because it happens often enough that some customer has difficulty accepting certain costs, does not understand why a fireplace from our storehouse that is MUCH MORE “WORKED” costs half as much as a seemingly SIMPLER Majorelle. I, as a rule, answer like this: OF MAJORELLE THERE IS ONLY ONE, AND IF THEY LOOK FOR IT IN THE ENTIRE EARTHLY GLOBE A REASON THERE WILL BE.. OR WON'T IT!
Many of the objects created by our Louis, perhaps also because of their indispensable later commercialization, rather than a “creation tout court,” should be seen as an “interpretation” (albeit a splendid and certainly very elegant one) of earlier stylisms.
SUCH IS THE CASE WITH OUR FIREPLACE MANTEL, WHICH IS, NO MORE AND NO LESS, THE VERY PERSONAL INTERPRETATION (OR, IF YOU PREFER, A REFINED REINTERPRETATION) THAT MAJORELLE WANTED TO GIVE OF A REGENCY FIREPLACE, A BAROQUE STYLISM DATING BACK AT LEAST TWO CENTURIES EARLIER.
And if very often “interpretations” hardly reach the original Beauty (indeed, very often, pardon the term, they result in “ciofeghe”..), this interpretation of our Louis seems to add, to the natural Regency Beauty, a touch of artistic Lightness..
PARIS, 1890S-1910S, EXCELLENT CONSERVATION AND PATINA, WORK OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EUROPEAN SIGNATURE OF THE ART NOUVEAU ERA.
