How Saint-Etienne has become the French capital of industrial design

Did the design born in the city of Greens? Yes, affirms an exhibition of the Museum of Art and Industry of the Magistrate of the Loire. To support this answer, she shows paintings, sculptures, porcelains, enamels, jewelry, weapons, ribbons, posters … In total, more than 300 works that tell how “the ambition of the beautiful” was embodied and deployed in the Stéphanois basin between the second half of the 19th century and the Second World War.

During the Second Empire, the Beau was a matter of rich collectors, like Jean-Marie Ogier (1827-1900), designer of ribbons who made a fortune and whose visitor savor, at the start of the course, a selection of objects taken from his cabinet of curiosities.

A wedding box decorated with a marquetry in ebony and tin inlaid, made in Florence in the 14th century, testifies to the taste for medieval objects of a 19th century imbued with romanticism. We then speak of artist of art or decorative art; No design yet, a discipline that will be at the junction of art and industry.

From drawing to chairs

Industrial, Saint-Etienne is the east. At the time, her workers made her the seventh most populous city in France. But, outside the private collections, what place is the beautiful? “At the London Universal Exhibition in 1851, our national pride was stung by the British’s advance in terms of what we are starting to call” industrial arts “, explains Marie-Caroline Janand, exhibition commissioner.

The French authorities decide to make up for this delay, in a form of trade war, but also in order to raise awareness among workers in the beautiful, to raise them socially. “The municipal school of drawing was transformed into a regional school of industrial arts in 1884. Six years later, the museum which is then called” Museum of Art, Industry and Commerce “opens its doors. We start to think about the design of everyday objects by articulating aesthetic and use.

And, when in the aftermath of the Second World War, the bicycle market collapsed, some manufacturers are moving towards the creation of tubular furniture. The iconic Plichaise, drawn in 1965, the first triumph of the Stéphanois industrial design and the last object of the exhibition, is a bright example of one of these successful conversions. They justify the title of French capital of design that Saint-Etienne is arranged.