Nancy - rue Henri Poincaré

Lillian :  In this post we are going to show you photos of 2 rather well known Art Nouveau buildings in rue Henri Poincaré, Nancy.

Audrey :  This wonderful building is the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie - all pale limestone and teal painted ironwork.


Lillian :  Built in 1908, the architects were Émile Toussaint et Louis Marchal - the marvelous iron work by Louis Majorelle.

Detail from the door

Audrey :   It is a big governmental building - we took photos of  some of the lovely details...

Audrey  :  Oak leaves & acorns because "From little things big things grow..."

Agriculture written beautifully - and is it plane tree leaves & fruit?

Quite lovely & slightly Egyptian?

 Audrey :  And that is a thistle made to look quite beautiful, even though really it is a prickly pesky plant - and an industrious agriculturalist would surely be busy trying to rid his farm of thistles! 
Lillian :  But remember - the thistle is one of the heraldic symbols of Lorraine, and Nancy.  The motto is "No one touches me with impunity".
 Audrey :  Well that is definitely true of thistles!

Lillian :  But now back to the building - the Chamber of Commerce & Industry.  There are lovely stained glass windows by that remarkably industrious member of l'école de Nancy - Jacques Gruber.


And these windows would be much better photographed from the inside - then you could see the details of the staining & painting on the glass.  **  edited to add:  I've found a photo of The Scientist window from the inside **  The first window shows nature - perhaps the edge of a forest near Nancy.


The next window has a town on a river or harbour.






 Then we have some industrious people. 

a Scientist

a Miner

 

And a glass blower.  Glass making was & still is an important industry for Nancy and the region - Daum is still making beautiful glass pieces and Baccarat crystal is still made in the town of Baccarat, just to the Sth East of Nancy.

  Audrey :  Well - back to the Art Nouveau architecture because just down the road from the Chamber of Commerce is l'Excelsior

and it certainly excels in architecture & interior design!  If only one could take a Tardis back in time and see this lovely place full of beautifully dressed ladies & gents from 1911 when the brasserie was brand new. 

Lillian : Our people were too shy to take many photos inside but if you click on the link above - there is a "panoramic" in the section "L'Ame du lieu".



The ceiling is just gorgeous with bracken fern fronds in every corner.

Lillian :  Here are some details from the outside - the architects were
Lucien Weissemburger & Alexandre Mienville.

 

Audrey :  The awning is decorated with pine leaves and glass pine-cones.   They looked as if made of opal and the photo doesn't really do them justice.

Lillian :  The stained glass windows are the work of .. guess who ...
Audrey :  Jacques Gruber.  Delicate ginkgo biloba ...

pine and fern fronds.

Lillian :   Here is the detail of one of the light fittings - outside the windows.  Once again - the attention to every gorgeous detail is stunning.

Audrey :  And - across the road from l'Excelsior there is a wonderful chocolatier & confiserie  (trans: fabulous lolly shop) where our people bought lots of Bergamot lollies ... totally delicious.

Audrey :  But let's look at all the yummy things in the windows of the confiserie.  The pretty coloured chocolates at the top are labeled "chardons liqueur" - liquor thistles!    And because we were in Nancy at Easter time (2011) there were some easter eggs and bunnies but there were far more chocolate fish & even a lobster - beautifully detailed with coloured chocolate. 

 Lillian :  The Chocolate Fish are not really for Easter - they are Poisson d'Avril (April fish).  From a popular April Fool's Day prank when children (mostly) try to stick paper fish on the backs of as many people as possible.

Audrey :  Ok - well - here is a display of Mirabelles - glace mirabelles and mirabelles made from marzipan ...
Lillian :  Mirabelles are a small yellow plum and a specialty of the Lorraine region - especially Metz and Nancy.  Our photographer had a meal with Mirabelles in everything except the entree - as an aperitif a Kir Mirabelle (wine with Mirabelle liquor), the main course was pork with Mirabelle sauce, desert was some wonderful nougat ice-cream with Mirabelle coulis and the coffee had some of that Mirabelle liquor in it. 

Audrey : And we thought that in Lorraine people ate only quiche!   Come to think of it - we didn't even see a Quiche Lorraine and we were in Nancy for 6 days!  The closest to a quiche was this piece of frittata that we bought from a bakery for lunch one day.  It was massive & exceptionally cheap & tasted wonderful.

Le Musée de l’École de Nancy - the gardens part 2

Lillian :  The grounds of the Musée de l’École de Nancy has a wonderful garden full of lovely flowers - and there are some wonderful Art Nouveau things too ...

This is the wing of the museum -





Audrey  :  All that lovely lattice work and the motifs ...



At the bottom of the gardens there was a Tardis - surely the most beautiful Tardis ever!

Lillian (aside) :  I haven't told Audrey but it isn't a Tardis - in fact it was a Funerary Monument.  A collaborative work by J-M Girard, Pierre Roche, Henri Carot (prob. the glass) and Alexandre Bigot.













Lillian :  There is a big lily pond and the circular pavilion-aquarium.  It dates from 1904 and is attributed to the architect Lucien Weissenburger.












Lillian  :  The wonderfully shaped windows and the door all have fabulous stained glass by Jacques Gruber.  See previous posts for more of his wonderful glass windows.

Here is the door from the outside -

 We could not go inside but our photographer managed to take some photos through the pavilion - from one window to some of the others.

You can see reflections of the trees and people sitting in the gardens to enjoy the sun-shine ... but you can also see the wonderful glass-work.  




Here is that door - it is stained glass & there are fish!







In detail - doesn't it look like an aquarium with real fish swimming about?

Lillian :  The fan-light above the door is stained and lead-light glass work - with flowers and a bird - here in detail through the reflections of the trees.

And a fan-light over one of the windows - some lovely water-lilies (nénuphar in French) and a frog (grenouille).

 

Audrey :  I wonder where Dr Who has gone ...

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.