Louis Majorelle

(September 26, 1859 - January 15, 1926)

Louis Majorelle was born in Toul, France, to a furniture and ceramics merchant in Nancy. There he spent his free time in his father's workshop where he developed his own artistic sense at an early age. By the time he was eleven, he had already produced his first work - a piece of sculpture - for sale.

In 1877, Majorelle went to study painting and architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Only two years later, his father's death cut short his studies, as he was compelled him to take over the artistic direction of his father's company in Nancy. Majorelle devoted himself to mastering the technical skills of the profession, but remained stylistically conservative, following his father's practice of designing historicist furniture.

The first hint of a new aesthetic appeared in one of twelve pieces that Majorelle exhibited at the 1894 Exposition d'Art Décoratif et Industriel Lorrain. Throughout the decade, he continued to experiment with Art Nouveau motifs that were gaining popularity in Nancy, Paris and abroad. Majorelle began working with floral decoration in marquetry, but overall his furniture still betrayed a Victorian sensibility.

By the end of the 1890s, Majorelle's company was expanding and moving away from handcrafting toward more industrialized practices. Majorelle assembled a team of skilled artisans who would ultimately collaborate with him on his best work and he began collaborating with Daum Frères on lighting designs in a partnership that would last for decades.

Despite these developments, no one could have predicted Majorelle's extraordinary success at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle, at which he displayed a dining room and bedroom ensemble. Each suite was unified by a flower motifs - one orchid, one water lily - and decorated with mosaic inlays of exotic woods and mother-of-pearl. Majorelle and his team of artisans had evidently planned and labored for years on this elaborate display, which not only exemplified the new artistic style, but also demonstrated the highest level of craftsmanship and construction.

The next eight years are considered Majorelle's golden years of furniture-making. In 1904 he won the Grand Prize at the St Louis World's Fair, demonstrating the cultural exchange encouraged by these international exhibitions. He continually produced furniture of the highest quality in a wide range of wood veneers including many newly introduced from France's colonies in North Africa and Asia. These woods, such as mahogany, amaranth and bougainvillea, added to the richness of quality in Majorelle's furniture.

Majorelle's furniture is still considered one of the greatest contributions to Art Nouveau. His success, in fact, owes a great deal to his early education in his father's workshop, where he encountered the styles of the Eighteenth Century. Firmly rooted in the craft of woodwork and furniture-making, his furniture subtly recalled the splendors of furniture from the 1700's. Majorelle often ornamented his pieces with gracefully sculpted gilt mounts, while the sinuous natural forms which inspired him suggested the C-scrolls of the Louis XV era. In an age when France was still humiliated by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and when luxury production in other countries was threatening the cultural hegemony the French saw as their birthright, Majorelle's ability to suggest the nation's glory days was paramount. Using a new vocabulary of natural forms and sumptuous lines, Majorelle's furniture merged old and new in a tantalizing way. This combination of exceptional craftsmanship with the new aesthetic was celebrated at the 1900 Exhibition by the public and critics alike, who saw in Majorelle a cherished link between the grandeur of the Eighteenth Century and the promise of the modern age.