Ref.9050
Winter garden by Loebnitz and Sédille
The Website
Discover Loebnitz's work. Artist as much as an industrial, he gave a new impetus to the ceramic manufacture
See the Website
The Virtual Visit
Find these woks of art in our virtual visit of our Paul Bert Serpette booth in the Saint-Ouen flea market.
See the Exhibition
.am-parent-card{
display: flex;
width: 100%;
gap: 5%;
}
.am-child-card{
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
border-radius: 5px;
background-color: white;
box-shadow: 2px 2px 5px #8080807d;
width: 50%;
overflow: hidden;
}
.ref-img1 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img2 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 400px;
}
.ref-img3 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 400px;
}
.ref-img4 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 400px;
max-height: 600px
}
.ref-img5 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 350px;
}
.ref-img6 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 300px;
}
.ref-img7 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 300px;
}
.ref-img8 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 200px;
}
.ref-img9 {
border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 5px grey;
width: 300px;
}
.ref-sect {
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
align-items: center;
gap: 30px
}
@media screen and (max-width: 640px) {
.am-parent-card{
display: flex;
flex-direction:column;
width: 100%;
}
.am-child-card{
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img2 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img3 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img4 {
width: 100%;
max-height: auto !important;
}
.ref-img5 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img6 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img7 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img8 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-img9 {
width: 100%;
}
.ref-sect {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
align-items: center;
gap: 30px
}
}
This winter garden demonstrates in a spectacular manner Paul Sédille and Jules Lœbnitz’s collaboration as
well as the appearance, at the end of the 19th century, of Orient-inspired decorations. The signature on the
back of the tiles, « Maison Pichenot, J. Lœbnitz successeur, Rue des Trois-Bornes n°7 et Rue Pierre Levée
n°4 Paris », allows us to date it between 1872 and 1878.
The Moorish inspiration
The ceramic adornment covering the walls of this panelling
reveals bright colours, blue shades enhanced with yellow, red and black. The monumental chimney, made
out of scagliola, ceramic tiles and cloisonné enamels over brass, is also adorned with muqarnas. The
sumptuousness of the architectural decoration is just as stunning as the brightness of the colours, made
possible by the use of ceramics.
The floor is composed by a mosaic which goes along with Lœbnitz’s ceramics. The winter garden also
presents several wrought-iron pieces, particularly for the French windows and the rotunda.
Jules Lœbnitz’s ceramic decoration comes with a profusion of colours, enhancing the architectural lines
of this unique piece. The top of the chimney is adorned with a splendid floral composition, inspired by
patterns from the south of Spain, particularly alluding to the Alhambra in Granada, and the decoration
of the Barca Door. On the chimney’s right side is a rotunda made of wooden panels and with a ceiling
decorated by wooden lattice. The arcatures at the entrance of the rotunda bring us back to the beautiful
ones in Córdoba’s Maqsurah, which were drawn by Paul Sédille in 1871 during his journey to Spain.
The Maquet-Nicolle family
This Moorish winter garden used to be the extension of one of
the living rooms of the Maquet-Nicolle’s ancient private mansion, located at the 35 boulevard Vauban in
Lille and edificated in 1868 – as written on the facade. Alfred Maquet (1836-1882), a merchant in the
thread and linen market, lived there with his young spouse Pauline Nicolle (1850-1931), related to an
important family in the spinning mill herself. The couple, married on the 22nd of November 1869, lived
boulevard Vauban starting from 1873 – the year their son Emile was born – and became owner of the place
in May 1882. Pauline Nicolle lived there until her death in 1931. Alfred and Pauline Maquet come from
Lille’s bourgeoisie of textile industry and spinning market. The textile industry, and more specifically
the spinning market, became Lille’s speciality during the 19th century.
The Maquet family, established in Lille since the 18th century, is not an « industrial » dynasty of
employers, but a merchant family who specialised in the linen trade. The merchant families are close to
the textile industry and the manufacturing field, with who they contract alliances throught business and
marriage, but at the same time they stay focused on sales instead of production, even if they rule true
firms. Starting from the second half of the 19th century, many important families of merchants get
access to industry and production.
Maquet, nevertheless, remain essentially a merchant family. Alfred Maquet’s father, Henri Maquet
(1801-1867), was a great merchant of Lille who married Stéphanie Verstraete, sister of the Verstraete
brothers, spinning industrials in Lille and Lomme. The Maquet-Nicolle’s sons, Émile (1873-1960) and
Henri (1876-1943), would too remain merchants in Lille.
Sédille's journey to Spain
In 1871, Paul Sédille goes on a journey to Spain, to discover
the Moorish art in Granada, Seville and Córdoba. He is highly impressed by the polychromatic monuments
presenting an abstract, floral ornamentation, in a simplificated range of tones. The winter garden is
probably influenced by this founding journey.
We can notice similarities between the decoration on the bottom parts of the walls and the adornment in
the Alhambra palace in Granada, especially in some details : the niche’s ornamentation of the Barca
Door, the muqarnas of the chimney’s lintel.
The entrance of the winter garden’s rotunda, with its arcatures, reminds us of the horseshoe polylobed
arches of Córdoba’s Maqsurah, which can be encountered in Paul Sédille’s sketches.
Indeed, Sédille came home from his Spanish journey with notebooks full of sketches. These were entrusted
to Lœbnitz, who created a range of patterns which could be declined on his ceramics. Considering this,
it is undeniable that the Alhambra’s decorations have been a major inspiration in the ornamentation of
our winter garden.
Córdoba’s Maqsurah, sketch by Paul Sédille
Sédille, architect of the Au Printemps department store
Sédille, architect of the Au Printemps department store
After the 1881’s fire which burned the Printemps, edificated in
1863, his founder Jules Jalouzot (1834-1916) chose the architect Paul Sédille to reconstruct it. The
architect deployed treasures of cleverness and modernity using steel in particular for the building’s
structures. Au Printemps quickly turned into the absolute model for department stores. Art and
architecture historians aknowledge it now as the department store prototype as well as the one of the
modern industrial building.
The Sédille and Loebnitz collaboration
In Sédille’s opinion, architectural decoration had to be
colourful and polychromatic architecture inherent to the building, that is to say polychromy had to last
as long as the building. This is the reason why he perceives ceramics as the best material for
architectural decoration.
The method of production of faience tiles resistant to chapping, originated by the Pichenot-Lœbnitz
manufacture, allowed to solve the problem of the enamel’s chapping by changing the composition of the
pottery itself rather than the one of the enamel. So, at the beginning of the 1870 decade, Lœbnitz
oriented himself towards the production of architectural ceramics. In addition, the great, « unchappable
» faience tiles could receive a painted decoration made of glazed, shiny and lasting colours. These
innovations in architectural ceramics by Lœbnitz permitted to Sédille to satisfy his will of a
polychromatic architecture.
In 1889, in a letter regarding the Parisian World’s Fair, Sédille gives advice to his good friend
Lœbnitz, then says : « Therefore, I am ending by wishing with you the generalisation of our shared
dream, the one of a true, coloured and sustainable decoration, by the earthenware and by the enamels
which came inalterable from the fire. »
The winter garden, one amongst many collaborations between the architect Paul Sédille and the ceramicist
Jules-Paul Lœbnitz, is a great example of polychromatic architecture and of the orientalist taste of the
time.
Facade of Jules Loebnitz’s workshop on 4, rue de la Pierre Levée made by the ceramicist and Paul
Sédille
Mosaïque sur le sol du jardin d’hiver, attribuée à Facchina
The mosaic floor attributed to G. Facchina
Giandomenico Facchina (1826-1903) was an Italian mosaicist, as
well as an ancient mosaic restorer in Friuli and then in Venezia. When he realised that Italy’s artistic
politics were to lead the art of mosaic to decadence, he decided to leave for France. After settling in
Montpellier, where he did patent a method to assemble and disassemble ancient mosaics, he is chosen by
Charles Garnier to execute the mosaics of the Parisian Opera. He developped a new process, allowing him
to earn time and reduct some costs : instead of executing the mosaics in situ, he produced them
confortably on a table, and then transported and arranged them by blocks. He received a golden medal at
the third Paris World’s Fair (1878), before being designated Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.
Facchina worked with many architects in the last decades of the 19th century, to contribute, with his
ornamentations of mosaic, to polychromatic architecture. Amongst those architects we can mention
Sédille, with who he collaborates in 1875 for the mosaics of the Printemps’s facade or at the
ornamentation of M. Brot’s familial tombstone in the Père Lachaise. He is also the author of the great
mosaic floor in the galerie Vivienne in Paris, of the one in the Petit Palais, and of many others. Thus,
it is most certain that Sédille would call on him for the execution of our winter garden’s mosaic floor.
Orientalism
To defend polychromatic architecture, Sédille often uses
references to oriental art, really fashionable in Occident since the beginnings of the 19th century. «
Orientalism » is an artistic movement of this time, derived from the « Romanticism » and provoked by
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Many artists travelled to the Middle-East and gave about it a
luxurious and fantasised interpretation. We can encounter this artistic movement in paintings but also
in architecture and decorative arts. Many pieces of work gave an insight on polychromatic oriental
architecture, which was a great inspiration for Paul Sédille.
Inspired by the orientalist movement of his time and by his own journey to discover the Moorish art in
Spain, Paul Sédille delivers to us a magnificent winter garden, dazzling with bright turquoise tiles,
thanks to the architectural ceramics of Jules Lœbnitz. Its rarity, its beauty grants to this piece its
uniqueness, and make it a major work of art for the 19th century history of architecture, and for the
appearance of architectural ceramics in France.
Palais du Gouverneur à Alger
