Nancy Art Nouveau houses in Saurupt

Lillian :  At the tourist office in Nancy you can hire an Audio guide to their Art Nouveau architecture, and if you follow the instructions without getting too lost, you'll see lovely buildings and hear all about them.  It is excellent value though it does feel a little strange to wander about the streets with an Audio guide held to your ear - they are just like the ones you hire in Art Galleries!  

Part of the Audio tour took us into the suburbs of Nancy - to Saurupt to see some really gorgeous Art Nouveau houses.


This is the Villa Henri-Emmanuel Lang (1905-1906), the architect was Lucien Weissenburger.

Audrey :  It is all the details that make these houses so lovely ...  and like us, those Art Nouveau artistes liked towers and turrets.


Audrey :  They also liked wonderfully fancy chimneys.










Lillian :  This villa has lots of different wall treatments - render, dressed stone, rough stone for the outer wall & striped brickwork.

The Entry

Brickwork, tiles & lead-light

Round the side - this bow window with a balcony on top and fantastic wood-work.

 

Audrey :  Reminds me of a pirate ship somehow ...


Well the next house we saw was the Villa Marguerite, 1903-05 - the architects were Joseph Hornecker (he also designed Nancy's Opera House)  & Henri Gutton.






 



Lillian :  A tower, balconies and just about every shape of window you can think of!
















Audrey :  Such pretty iron-work and an oval port-hole.

Audrey :  French cyclists ... in front of the next Villa on the tour

 This dates from 1902 - 04, designed by Émile André.

Glycine is French for Wisteria - but the Wisteria was across the road - growing all over the Villa Les Roches ...

Lillian :  Trans. The Rocks - appropriate as the walls of this house are of undressed stone.  Émile André. was the architect of this house too - it is very different from its 'sister' across the road.

Gate Post

Lillian :  Les Roches had a painted frieze under the eaves - unfortunately now rather faded.






 Audrey :  Our people looked for this last building for ages and had given up trying to find it when ... there it was!

Maison Geschwindammer, 1905, by Henri Gutton & Joseph Hornecker (like the Villa Marguerite).

It has gorgeous mosaic - with golden tiles.

 

Iron-work at main door-way

another Door-way

Lillian :  The details as you look up - from that main door-way

Painted Detail

Lillian :  This is the  balcony in front of the window that is framed by the lovely mosaic - ceramic (I think) with poppy heads.   In our next post we'll show some more architectural details - some Art Nouveau, some Art Deco ...

Le Musée de l’École de Nancy - the gardens part 1

Audrey :  We are writing this post almost a year from when we were actually in Nancy.
Lillian :  Wouldn't it be nice if we could spend every Spring-time in France?

Ah well, at least we can look at all our photos.  And we loved the gardens at Le Musée de l’École de Nancy so much that we went back the following day to spend more time admiring all the flowers.

 

Lilac - Lilas in French.  This just doesn't grow in Sydney Australia - it is hard to believe how scented the flowers are - and the variety of colours.




Audrey :  It makes a cute head-dress or ear-muffs too.

Lillian :  Our people do grow Spanish Bluebells in Sydney.  These bluebells (jacinthe des bois) were a very pretty mauve, nearly pink.

Audrey :  It gets a bit confusing with lilac that is white and bluebells that are mauve ...

but weren't the tree peonies amazing!

 

Audrey :  Those flowers were so large - bigger even than our heads!

  

Lillian :  I liked this dark red peony - the French name for a peony is pivoine.

 

Audrey :  You look like a lovely Spanish dancer with that red flower in your hair Lilian.
Lillian :  Thank you, that's very sweet. 


Lillian :  A lot of the plants in the garden of the museum are those that inspired the Art Nouveau artists of l’École de Nancy.



Lovely white flowers - we think they are a wild columbine or Aquilegia (ancolie in French) they were beautifully placed in front of a screen with fabulous red poppies (pavot). 













Audrey :  Art Nouveau artists and craftspeople were very fond of poppies. 
Fern fronds are also a reoccurring motif in Nancy's Art Nouveau.



 Lillian : Our people thought that perhaps this bush with all the white flowers was the ombelliféres that is another favourite motif for artists like Emile Gallé.

Audrey :  Lucky for me that it was not the Ombrelles - because it seems that the flowers those people liked so much was probably giant hogweed a very nasty plant indeed!   (but please let us know if we have that wrong - and the Ombrelles were some other flower)

Lillian :  A Japanese Maple with wonderful purplish leaves.

Lillian :  Here we are under a Magnolia tree.



And our tour-manager helping us to pose for the camera.










 Audrey :  I think we'll have to save our photos of the buildings and things that are in the grounds of the  Musée de l’École de Nancy for our next post - because this one is so full of photos already.

 Lillian : Well, it is hard to resist sharing photos of flowers like this massive & beautiful pink peony flower.

Le Musée de l’École de Nancy

This post should come with a "partial nudity" warning.  Art Nouveau artists were inspired by many lovely things such as flowers & women ...

Lillian :  Nancy is a wonderful place to see Art Nouveau and a visit to the Musée de l’École de Nancy is a delight for anyone interested in the style -
Audrey :  Or if you just like seeing beautiful things that have been beautifully made.


Lillian : Quite! It is lovely to see complete sets of furniture, with paintings, lamps, vases ... all presented in a natural way in the rooms of the house. 




Audrey : The painting you can see part of there is by Victor Prouvé - it is of 3 lovely ladies in soft, pretty dresses, painted in 1903.  The furniture is by Louis Majorelle, his Ensemble aux nénuphars (French for waterlilies) 1900.











Lillian : The details - the way the shapes of waterlily leaves and stems are suggested in the shapes of the legs, the turned up edges of the desk-top, the table ... just lovely!















Audrey : Detail of a chair - also by Louis Majorelle - Chaise Pavots (poppies), very elegant. 












Lillian :  This room - Salle a manger (dining room) by Eugène Vallin & Victor Prouvé  - was a trifle over-whelming!

The original room was somewhat larger so the beautiful painted ceiling has actually been cut down a little.  The light-fitting is gorgeous. 

And here is a close-up picture of the tea-set.













Audrey :  Of course, electric light was a wonderful new thing when these Art Nouveau artistes were creating & designing.  They even found wonderfully clever ways to use light bulbs - 


isn't that delightful?  I wanted to stand under that light and wait for everyone to give me kisses - but our people wanted to see everything in the museum ...

Lillian :  And there is so much to see!  we can only show you a tiny amount here.
This lovely set of lights in glass gourds is by Emile Gallé, 1902.
The foliage is made of iron, and I think that would look wonderful under a verandah.

Lillian : The Art Nouveau movement held that everything can & should be made beautiful (as well as practical).  So a lovely painting is put into a gorgeous frame - with a dragonfly perhaps.

 




Audrey :  Even a bath-tub!  Not merely a place to get clean but an amazing grotto complete with water plants and nymph!

And all done in ceramic tiles.







Audrey : This fire-screen is inspired by the ocean with glass 'waves' and metal 'sea-weed''.


Lillian : I think that is what the French call verre américain - opalescent glass, invented by Tiffany & Co.

Audrey :  Let's see more lovely lead-light work...  The top of a display cabinet with pretty birds.










Lillian : A window with a lovely lady in a garden - hope she is using sun-screen! 

Pretty peacocks and curling fern-fronds in the corners.

Audrey : The lady has a kitty - and kitty wants a cuddle.

Lillian :  This very pretty window with roses is on the landing of the stairs.







Audrey : And this massive window - almost 3.5m long - is by Jacques Gruber 1904 (see our previous post for more of Monsieur Gruber's wonderful works in glass).

Some detail - the irises are of verre américain.

Audrey : Let's see more lovely glass - this time in vases. 

Lillian : Ah - some of the vases are displayed near a window so the sunlight shines through them.  This fern frond vase caught our stylist's eye. 

Audrey :  Downstairs there is a collection of glass-work by Emile Gallé

the colour in this vase is stunning.

This is called Ipoméa et Phalènes, it was in the Exposition universelle de Paris in 1900 but then the base was also of glass.  It seems that it had an accident back then and was given a new bronze base.        The moths have been applied by a marqueterie technique (see here for info).

Lillian :  Here is some more marquetry, the more common sort - in timber.  Some very delicate insects.

 

Lillian : And a delightful trinket box with tulips and a moth - by Emile Gallé.  Those Art Nouveau artists designed and made everything!

 

Lillian : In our next post we will show you the lovely gardens of this museum.  But now we'll leave you with some details from a large painting that delighted our stylist.  Unfortunately we don't know who painted this, our photographer couldn't find a signature and it is not in the big book our people bought from the Musée.

It shows women working at all sorts of textiles - here we see 2 ladies hand sewing and the lady bent over the tambour frame is busy embroidering or beading.









In the LH corner there is a lady making lace - bobbin (or pillow) lace Dentelle au Fuseau.  She is using a pillow with a roller (for making long lengths of lace) the French call this a carreau traditionnel and her bobbins don't have the beads (or spangles) found on English bobbins - European lace-makers use wooden bobbins of different shapes (like these) - no beads.