Saint-Louis - Extract

SAINT LOUIS

the cristalleries saint-louis date back to 1586. named the “royal glassworks of saint-louis” in 1767, the manufacture later became the “royal crystal works of saint-louis” and began to specialize exclusively in the craft of crystal making in the early nineteenth century. it is this savoir faire, handed down from generation to generation, that characterizes the unique quality and appearance of saint-louis crystal today; a crystal that is dense, clear, sonorous and luminous. whether traditional or contemporary, the pieces that emerge from the kilns here every day are each more stunning than the last. made by master glassmakers and cutters belonging to the elite “meilleurs ouvriers de france”, these table settings, decorative objects, chandeliers, sconces and lamps never fail to amaze and delight. here, saint-louis opens its doors and, via the words of sébastien lapaque and the photographs of françois halard, guides us through its magical universe, side by side with its virtuoso artisans.

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SAINT LOUIS Photographs by François Halard Text by Sébastien Lapaque

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Collection of decanters

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Collection of decanters

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Canes of crystal in the paperweight workshop

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Canes of crystal in the paperweight workshop

A WORLD IN YOUR HAND

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At Saint-Louis, there is a place where the opposition between the absolute measurement of quality and the yardstick of functionality is more evident than elsewhere: the paperweight workshop. Fashionable in the nineteenth century, notably between 1845 and 1860, when paperweights made in the manufactures of Saint-Louis, Baccarat and Clichy shared the favours of connoisseurs, then rediscovered in the middle of the twentieth, and prized as treasures by certain museums in the twenty-first, these strange “crystal bonbons” adored by the novelist Colette, author of Sido, Gigi and the Cat and Chéri, are now an exclusive speciality of the manufacture in Lorraine. Inside these paperweights, we often admire the canes ordered in circles of different colours that create the illusion of a bed of flowers, thanks to the ancient and famous technique of millefiori, known to the Romans and rediscovered by Venetian glassmakers in the sixteenth century. But gardens have not been the only inspiration for the glassmakers who have been making these objects at Saint-Louis since 1845. The airy and transparent depths of crystal can also hold fruits, vegetables, figures, allegories and animals, fish and butterflies. Sometimes observe there are gilded inlays and even real gold medals set into the heart of the crystal. This feat was pulled off by the glassmakers at Saint-Louis in 1976, to pay tribute to George Washington and celebrate the bicentenary of the United States of America’s independence.

Adored by collectors, the so-called “sulphides” paperweights, which appeared in the late eighteenth century, contain ceramic cameos or enamelled

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figurines set into the crystal. The origin of their name is an enigma, in that the paste used to make them contains silica, alumina, lime and magnesia, but no sulphides. If we are to believe the distinguished experts, the name comes from the sulphur once used to take the cast of medals. Their production stopped in 1845, when the crystal ball as repository of memory and ornament changed its nature and paperweights were born. The first postage stamps had just been issued in the United Kingdom and in France, and mail needed to be compact. Prized by connoisseurs, sulphides can fetch considerable sums at auction, whether at Christie’s, Sotheby’s or the Hôtel Drouot.

Modern sulphides, production of which was revived in the mid-twentieth century, also have their admirers. Take the paperweights conceived at the Cristallerie Saint-Louis in 1953 at the request of the American collector Paul Jokelson, to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Some thousand five hundred pieces were made, with or without millefiori, exclusively for collectors in the US. Without their passion, the directors of the crystal works would never have sought to recapture those lost secrets and forgotten techniques from nearly a century earlier. Three hors-commerce copies of this sulphide were set aside: one for Her Majesty, the Queen of England, one for Colette, and one for the heritage collections at Saint-Louis.

“Making a paperweight takes a lot of time and a lot of know-how,” a glassmaker tells me, to explain the fading of the competition. Hence the impatience of collectors the world over to see the new numbered series of 75 to 125 pieces produced every year by the Cristallerie Saint-Louis. Never more than four or five different models, all dated and bearing the SL monogram, plus a few traditional models that are still valued, which the manufacture in Lorraine continues to produce. The paperweight workshop remains one of the most magical and unusual pieces in the whole works. There four artisans work with the hot canes of crystal, shaped using a blowtorch, tongs and shears. Modelling and sculpting: their gestures erase the frontier between art and artisanship. Here, more than anywhere else, crystal is present in all its mystery and poetry. “The birth and marketing of a new series demands a long creative process,” offers Xavier Zimmermann, a glassmaker and “Meilleur Ouvrier de France” who has been dedicating his talents to the art of paperweights at Saint-Louis for thirty years now. “We make exhaustive tests, fashioning up to fifteen or twenty different pieces before we find what we’re

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looking for. We are completely free to propose whatever models we like. After that, it’s up to the artistic directors to validate them, or not. Sometimes we work for a very specific request. We have special orders, connoisseurs looking for a unique model. Sometimes, too, we work with contemporary artists, like the artists and glassmakers Perrin & Perrin, who present us with models, and we determine whether or not they’re feasible.”

Round or faceted, clear or coloured, paperweights are fascinating objects, and their role goes well beyond being placed on a desk or mantelpiece. They are objects to dream by. They are made to be held and hefted, to sparkle in the light. The admiring gaze loses itself in the inlays, the inclusions of gold, and the subjects fashioned in coloured crystal. It’s like wandering in a Mediterranean garden or being twenty leagues under the sea. It will come as no surprise to learn that so many writers, from Oscar Wilde to Truman Capote, should have loved these “bubbles” of crystal.

Colette, who owned more than a thousand of them, kept them simply to refresh the soul, to rejuvenate her dreams and revive her lyricism: “The sphere of crystal, an abyss, an image-trap, a haven for weary spirits, and a creator of chimeras, never 1. Colette, Œuvres complètes, vol. VI 1 (Paris: Flammarion “Le Fleuron”, ceases to offer mysterious temptation to man.”

1949), p. 371.

At the Cristallerie Saint-Louis, paperweights are a link between yesterday and today. They ensure the continuity between before-yesterday and after-tomorrow. It seems astonishing, now, to think that this tradition was lost for nearly a century and then reinvented, to the extent that it has become a Saint-Louis speciality, synonymous with its worldwide image 2. This book was written by Gérard Ingold, who was director of the for excellence. At Saint-Louis, no project can be too Compagnie des Cristalleries de bold where paperweights are concerned. There have Saint-Louis for three decades after the war. It is significant that this been giant ones and square ones. Or overlay models, richly illustrated album was originally the ones covered in a layer of coloured crystal that published in English, in America, in 1981, before coming out in France as is then sliced open. These are particularly difficult Les Boules presse-papiers et les sulfures des cristalleries de Saint-Louis (Paris: to make. “But then, at Saint-Louis, we like to set Hermé, 1985). ourselves challenges,” says one glassmaker with a smile He is not complaining. Further into quality, into light. With the paperweight, life is a dream and crystal, a game. It would be wonderful to dedicate a whole book to these fabulous objects.2

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The paperweights displayed in the vitrines of the Grande Place, the crystal museum at the heart of the manufacture, sum up the history of the crystal works, which, in 2017, will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the letters patent whereby the glassworks at Müntzthal become the Royal Glassworks of Saint-Louis.

At Saint-Louis, the past lives on, and is constantly inventing its future. Roger Lévy, director and founder of the museum housing two thousand pieces, likes to point out that this collection bears witness to over four centuries of history, back to 1586, when the first establishment with wood-fired kilns was founded in the Pays de Bitche, long before Lorraine became French. The early production consisted of window glass and goblets in ordinary glass, like the one we can admire in the museum, with their wheel-engraved medallions and inscriptions. In those days the technique for making lead crystal, invented by George Ravenscroft in 1675, remained a secret cautiously guarded by the English. But after countless efforts, like a dogged code-breaker, François de Beaufort, director of the glassworks, cracked the method. This was in 1781. The following year, after a jury of scientists had scrupulously examined several pieces of wheel-engraved crystal, a report by France’s Royal Academy of Sciences signed by the mathematician Condorcet confirmed the nobility of the crystal produced in the Vosges: “Comparison with pieces of English crystal confirms the perfect resemblance in every respect between the new French crystal and the English.” The adventure of Saint-Louis was about to begin.

The glassmakers of those times are of course long gone, but the adventure continues and the spirit is unchanged. “Contemporary creation is driving towards a marked modernity, and that means constantly refreshing our technical mastery,” argues Roger Lévy as he proudly presents a lamp from the Saule collection designed for Saint-Louis by the Breton artist Ionna Vautrin. This unusual lamp compels attention, inspires wonder.

It results from the bold revisiting of the art of chandelier making practised at Saint-Louis since 1837. The technique for making the branches, which are hand-drawn and modelled, is the same as for traditional chandeliers.

But the result suggests the corolla of a flower, the undulations of a reed in the wind, or a royal crown.

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It is a privilege to witness the birth of such a marvellous and extravagant object. As he twists the reeds of molten crystal, weaving them together with his precise movements, a picture of concentration, the glassmaker is like a snake charmer. At Saint-Louis, the craftsman’s actions may be free and graceful, but they are never gratuitous. They express an excellence that is decided in a matter of minutes, or even in a few seconds. “There is no margin for error, no second attempts,” one glassmaker tells me. “When it’s set, it’s over.” The interval of time when the crystal is malleable is very short. Misjudgement or clumsiness are pretty much irreparable. And when it comes to flaws, there will be no indulgence from the quality controllers.

Curious about the mystery of such a rigorous selection process, I took a discreet look at the shelves stacked with discards: an impressive sight.

There are two types of rejects: those whose flaws occurred in the crystal as it came out of the kiln, and those due to mistakes by the craftsmen. “Our discussions can be pretty ferocious,” explains one team leader, “but there’s no point negotiating. Over the years, buyers have become increasingly demanding. In the old days people wouldn’t balk at a little bubble in the crystal or a flaw that was almost invisible to the naked eye; today, those same tiny flaws are no longer accepted. I wouldn’t claim that we’re at 100% perfection, but we’re pretty close.” The hot glass workshop, where light is born from matter, sends out only products fit to be premium pieces. And the selection process is just as rigorous in the cold glass workshop, where the pieces are cut, painted and engraved. The actual number of rejects is a well-kept secret at Saint-Louis, but nobody pretends it isn’t high.

Thus, the production of paperweights confirms that old precept of the alchemists: to achieve excellence, one must spend a long time searching. The word quest is not out of place here. And, to evoke the double quest of the glassmakers and glass-cutters at the crystal works, it is tempting to adapt those famous words from the poet Stéphane Mallarmé to the composer Claude Debussy: Further, really, into quality, into light …

Quality in the service of light and light as the sign of quality. Indifferent to the tyrannical rhythms of industrial production, this quest is what distinguishes the culture of artisanship. At Saint-Louis the dedication to Beauty is not motivated by a moral imperative. And the reality of competition is only part of the story. Indeed the logic of market share would be

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more likely to encourage the production of ersatz pieces – pale commercial copies. That is how much of Europe’s high art of crystal making was lost.

But not at Saint-Louis. To understand what it is that is perpetuated in this house, we need to talk about the artisan’s aspiration to quality. Visiting the manufacture in Lorraine, we understand that the artisanal ethos of work well done is an end in itself. For the artisans here, this is their inspiration, their reward and their justification.

“Don’t waste your talent, or lose your soul,” enjoined Jean-Louis Dumas, who was well aware of the dangers facing the artistic crafts.

And that, perhaps, is how we recognize great art: by this concern not to lose its soul, this quest for perfection indifferent to the rationalization of production and alien to the interests of time. The craftsman does not seek merely to produce what is useful. He or she strives to create something that is truly beautiful.

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Line of Amadeus hocks

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Line of Amadeus hocks

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Saule collection by Ionna Vautrin

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Saule collection by Ionna Vautrin

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48-light Royal chandelier in the gardens of the maison Saint-Louis

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48-light Royal chandelier in the gardens of the maison Saint-Louis

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36-light Royal chandelier in front of the poND at Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche

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36-light Royal chandelier in front of the poND at Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche

SAINT LOUIS

the cristalleries saint-louis date back to 1586. named the “royal glassworks of saint-louis” in 1767, the manufacture later became the “royal crystal works of saint-louis” and began to specialize exclusively in the craft of crystal making in the early nineteenth century. it is this savoir faire, handed down from generation to generation, that characterizes the unique quality and appearance of saint-louis crystal today; a crystal that is dense, clear, sonorous and luminous. whether traditional or contemporary, the pieces that emerge from the kilns here every day are each more stunning than the last. made by master glassmakers and cutters belonging to the elite “meilleurs ouvriers de france”, these table settings, decorative objects, chandeliers, sconces and lamps never fail to amaze and delight. here, saint-louis opens its doors and, via the words of sébastien lapaque and the photographs of françois halard, guides us through its magical universe, side by side with its virtuoso artisans.

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