On that day in the late nineteenth century, architect Louis Majorelle was strolling through the streets of Paris when, raising his eyes to a clear sky, he was thunderstruck by one of those window panes peculiar to Parisian mansards, a peculiar dormer window (almost always made of sheet metal and lead, more rarely of cast iron) that the French call “oeil de boeuf.”
No, not that the distinguished Mr. Majorelle was a voyeur, his aim had much other and higher purposes; at that very moment he had envisioned how to turn that curvilinear shape into a piece of furniture among the many he himself designed and produced. Yes, he would make a.... fireplace out of it!
SCROLLING TO THE END OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS SHEET, AMONG THE LAST ONES YOU WILL FIND IMAGES OF PARISIAN OEIL DE BOEUF DORMER WINDOWS, SO THE UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS WRITTEN ABOVE WILL BE CRYSTAL CLEAR.
ALWAYS AT THE END OF THE SCROLLING IMAGES, AT THE LAST PLACE YOU WILL FIND THE MOST IMPORTANT “OEUIL DE BOEUF ” FIREPLACE DESIGNED BY OUR FRUITFUL ARCH. MAJORELLE. IT IS A CHIMNEY IN PRECIOUS WHITE MARBLE OF SIVEK THAT, TAKING INTO THE LINE OF THE ABBAINI PARISIANS, GETS TO GIVE THEM THE ETHEREAL BODY (a contrast of words, this “ethereal body” but how well it renders the concept!!), ONIRIC AND DREAMING OF A... CLOUD!!!
NOT THAT OUR CAST IRON ONE IS ANY LESS, EVERY CATEGORY HAS ITS FIRSTS AND LASTS, AND OUR CAST IRON OEUIL DE BOEUF MAJORELLE IS, IN THE CATEGORY OF CAST IRON FIREPLACES, CERTAINLY ONE OF THE TOP OF THE CLASS.
Well, at this point you will be intrigued by the figure of our Louis, won't you?
So it becomes necessary to say two things about this Mr. Architect for greater understanding of what we will see or read in this little article.
The 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 himself. Just to understand his artistic importance, we will say that Louis is a disciple and collaborator of Gallé (whom he 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 represents a cornucopia for young architects from all over the world eager to study said style. To finish I will say that our Louis founded (together with Gallé) the “Ecole de Nancy,” a veritable patronage forge of the most important European artists of that era.
But space is a tyrant, so let us return to the object of our writing, to our “bull's eye” which changed from a window for an attic to a frame for a hearth after traversing the fervent mind of our Louis..
And before I even try to analyze its highly original forms, I would like to point out to you how this artifact (because, let me be clear, this casting, like all artistic castings, was made entirely by hand, molds of the finest earth and so much skill on the part of the master smelter) was conceived more like a sculpture than a fireplace.
The round and convex dominate in this work, completely foreign to any previous decorative dictate, pure revolution, pure Freedom of expression, pure, indeed, dream.
In short, our Majorelle, although the progenitor of the modern stylists who, for mere money, sign everything and produce everything (from Sassuolo tiles to sunglasses, the only thing missing are curlers...) and as such the owner of the “Maison Majorelle” (this is the name of his factory, a factory, mind you, whose doors will be closed by his heirs only in 1956...), our Majorelle, I said, had more at heart the artistic result of his production than the more merely practical or economic one.
Definitions of Liberty are wasted, I like above all this one: “It is Liberty that which, freeing itself from academic forms, succeeds in creating something beautiful and useful for everyone.”
You tell me if our Louis did not ideally embrace and practically express this modern definition when he sourced this very useful and beautiful artifact!
YOU WILL FIND THIS SAME SHEET IN THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS OF OUR WEBSITE:
(A) CAST IRON FIREPLACES MANTELS (BECAUSE CAST IRON, ALBEIT ARTISTIC, WAS MADE);
B) ART NOUVEAU FIREPLACES MANTELS (BECAUSE OF “ FLORAL ART” IT HAS A LOT)
C) ART DECO FIREPLACE MANTELS (THE PERIOD IS THAT, AND ITS ARCHITECTURAL STRUCTURE ALSO)
IN SHORT, HERE WE ARE, AS IS WELL WRITTEN IN THE TITLE OF THIS CARD, BETWEEN ART NOUVEAU AND DECO', WE ARE IN THAT FANTASTIC ZONE OF ART THAT THE FRENCH (THE WORLD'S FINEST IN STYLISM, WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT) CALL, INDISTINCTLY, “ART NOUVEAU.”
