Another ceramic building

I have already made some posts about “art nouveau” buildings in Paris, Guimard, Lavirotte... and also about what you may call ceramic buildings (1, 2).

There is one ceramic building from 1903 at (number 2) rue Eugène Manuel in the 16th arrondissement, which is hardly mentioned anywhere, but which I think is remarkable. After a long research, I managed to find information on a blog called “Paris 1900”, which is an excellent source for all kinds of Paris 1900 architecture.





The architect is Charles Klein and he’s known for this building only. There is even a doubt whether he was an architect, or just the owner and the initiator of the building. Anyhow, there is a plate on the facade indicating that he’s the architect and Emile Muller the ceramist. References to Emile Muller are easier to find. He was collaborating with leading architects (including Guimard) and artists.

The theme for the decoration in glazed stoneware is obviously thistles!

The remarkable entrance door is created by a certain A. Dondelinger, who designed a lot of ironworks around Paris those days, including in collaboration with Lavirotte.A bit further up on the street you can find some more ceramics on a building, but much more modestly. Between the different early 1900 buildings in the street, a - in my opinion - much less fortunate architecture has found its place. (What did they destroy?)

Rue Campagne Première...

On my way elsewhere yesterday, I suddenly saw a building close to Boulevard Raspail which attracted my attention, the one you see above. So I stopped.
I found that this ceramic building of a mixed “art nouveau” and “art modern” (big windows) style was designed by an architect called André Arfvidson and that the ceramics have been done by Alexandre Bigot, who was also the creator of the decoration of several other ceramic buildings which I have already posted about, including for architects like Guimard, Lavirotte and Perret. This one was built in 1911. The street is called rue Campagne Première and is close to the crossing of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse. It was intended for artist studios. The neighbor building is a hotel, called Istria with a plate on the wall, indicating the names of famous guests. Parallel to rue Campagne Première is another street, today pedestrian, called Passage d’Enfer (Hell Passage). The buildings partly share front and back side between these two streets and have been the home and studios for personalities like Man Ray, Foujita, Picabia, Rimbaud… Elsa Triolet and Aragon met at the hotel Istria. Modigliani had a studio close by and spent a lot of time drinking and fighting in the cafés here - there were some famous ones - paying with his paintings.Walking down rue Campagne Première, looking into some small side streets and courtyards you find a lot of artist studios. Rainer-Maria Rilke was one of the inhabitants. Next surprise for me was the building just across the street, on the opposite side of Boulevard Raspail. I met with an architect in the street who now worked in this building. He let me in and I learnt the Picasso had his studio here 1912-13. Picasso then moved to another place a minute’s walk away where he stayed until 1918. You can here see his self portrait and some paintings from this period. In the neighbor house to Picasso’s second place, Simone de Beauvoir spent her last thirty years, overlooking the Montparnasse cemetery, where she now is buried together with Sartre.





Of further interest here is the Camondo School for interior and product design (see also my post about the Camondo museum), connected to an Architecture School with students like Mallet-Stevens, Auguste Perret … and Farah Diba Pahlavi, ex-Empress of Iran. A last thing worth mentioning: If you again cross the Boulevard Raspail, you will find the Fondation Cartier for temporary art, designed by Jean Nouvel. It was worth making a stop here.

Some of these pictures can be found on my photo-blog.