Louis Majorelle

LOUIS MAJORELLE (France, 1859 - 1926)
Art Nouveau side table, ca. 1900.
Walnut wood, Ceylon lemongrass and fruit marquetry.
Signed on the top.
Measurements: 78 x 57 x 37 cm.

Modernist side table designed by Louis Majorelle. The top is marquetry with fruit woods representing autumnal bouquets. The sinuous legs simulate sinewy stems topped with bundles of wheat carved at waist level. An oval shelf rests on the crossbar. In Majorelle's pieces, nature appears symbolically in the ribs, the veining, the softness of the materials and the combination of woods that evoke living forms.

A cabinetmaker and designer who was a member of the School of Nancy, of which he was even vice-president, Louis Majorelle was the son of a furniture designer and manufacturer based in the town of Toul, from where he moved to Nancy with his family. There Majorelle made his first artistic training, then went to Paris in 1877, where he studied for two years at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he was taught by Jean-François Millet. However, the death of his father forced him to return to Nancy to run the family china and furniture factory, a task that he would combine with his artistic practice for the rest of his life. In the eighties and until the early nineties, Majorelle manufactured Louis XV style furniture in the family firm, which he took in 1894 to the Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts in Nancy. There, however, he was able to learn first-hand about the pieces of Émile Gallé, whose influence would determine a radical turn in Majorelle's production. From then on, his work would be characterized by the use of naturalistic elements in his forms and marquetry. From the nineties on, his furniture will be fully framed in the Art Nouveau language, with intertwined forms and a clear direct inspiration in nature, with motifs such as vegetables, water lilies, the typical thistle of Nancy or the dragonfly, an icon of French modernism. In 1900 he went a step further and created a forge workshop in his factory, in order to be able to make iron fittings in accordance with his designs. As time went by, it became more important, and he was responsible for the staircase handrails and the exterior details of numerous buildings in Nancy.