17 Facts About Louis Majorelle

Louis-Jean-Sylvestre Majorelle, usually known simply as Louis Majorelle, was a French decorator and furniture designer who manufactured his own designs, in the French tradition of the ebeniste.

Louis Majorelle was one of the outstanding designers of furniture in the Art Nouveau style, and after 1901 formally served as one of the vice-presidents of the Ecole de Nancy.

Louis Majorelle is one of those who contributed the most to the transformation of furniture.

In 1861, his father, Auguste Louis Majorelle, who himself was a furniture designer and manufacturer, moved the family from Toul to Nancy.

On 7 April 1885, Louis Majorelle married Marie Leonie Jane Kretz, daughter of the director of the municipal theaters in Nancy.

Louis Majorelle's studio was responsible for the ironwork of balconies, staircase railings, and exterior details on many buildings in Nancy at the turn of the twentieth century.

At the apogee of the Belle epoque, during the 1900 Paris World's Fair, Louis Majorelle's designs triumphed and drew him an international clientele.

In February 1901, Louis Majorelle became one of the founding members of the Ecole de Nancy, alternatively known as the Alliance provinciale des industries d'art, which was a group of artists, architects, art critics, and industrialists in Lorraine who decided to work in a collaborative fashion, and predominantly in the Art Nouveau style.

Louis Majorelle was one of the vice-presidents of the group from the outset, remained so throughout the existence of the Ecole de Nancy, and was certainly considered one of the group's leaders.

Louis Majorelle was consistently one of the internationally renowned figures of the group who could always be found at any show at which the group exhibited.

In 1898, Louis Majorelle hired Henri Sauvage, a young Parisian architect, to collaborate with Weissenburger on the building of his own house, known as the Villa Jika, but now popularly known as simply the Villa Louis Majorelle, in Nancy.

Louis Majorelle himself produced the ironwork, furniture, and the interior woodwork, such as the grand staircase.

Louis Majorelle located his own personal studio on the third floor under a gabled roof, and included a huge arched window combled together with spandrels that evoke the branches of a tree or flower.

In 1914, with the outbreak of war, Louis Majorelle hoped to hold out and continue production in Nancy.

The Louis Majorelle family reported that their shop in Lille had been looted by advancing German troops.

Louis Majorelle relocated to Paris for the remainder of the war, where he worked in the workshops of fellow furniture designers.

Louis Majorelle died in Nancy in 1926 in his beautiful property on rue du Vieil-Aitre, leaving to his brothers Jules and Pierre, the management of the store on rue Saint-Georges in Nancy and the sawmill of Bouxieres-aux-Dames.