More Nancy Scenes

After Villa Majorelle we walked back toward the Place Stanislaus, taking in assorted sights, Art Nouveau and other, culminating with the incredible "skylight" at the Credit Lyonnais bank.

Block of Discord: at least three Art Decos, maybe a Nouveau, and
one Medieval

Across the street, no doubt: Art Nouveau; we are beginning to 
notice that Art Nouveau architecture in Nancy often seems to involve
some sort of pointy thing

In many cases, the Musee of the Nancy School has provided helpful
signage identifying the architect, sculptor, iron-monger; even the
original owner; and date

Sometimes the identity of the architect and sculptor
is built right in, as in Paris

Former home of newspaper; now a Starbucks; sic
transit, Gloria...

Bank of note

The Genin-Louis buidling; muy famoso

In some cases, just a vestige

And finally, the Credit Lyonnais bank building...

Just walk right in like you own the place or possibly
want to open a savings account and get a free toaster

Jacques Gruber's monumental, and monumentally beautiful,
skylight

Also did the cupola at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann

The bank employees occasionally look up from their
screens and smile at the poor tourists who don't get to
work in monumental Art Nouveau masterpiece
environments

Villa Majorelle Nancy

Louis Majorelle inherited the family furniture manufacturing business as well as his father's skill in design and, still in his twenties, became one of the leaders of the School of Nancy. In 1905 he commissioned young Parisian architect Henri Sauvage to design Villa Majorelle, one of Nancy's first Art Nouveau homes. The house is now owned by the Museum of the School of Nancy, renovated back mostly to its original state, and partially furnished with Majorelle meubles. As with the Museum, the AV tour can be downloaded from Google Play or the Apple site.

Excellent interpretive stuff, throughout; and in English
too; even better on the downloadable tour

Museum Of The School Of Nancy

June 9th was a pretty big Art Nouveau day for us, taking in both the Musee de Ecole de Nancy and the Majorelle House, and then a stroll down Avenue Foch toward the city center. We've seen our share of Art Nouveau/Modernista/Secessionist/Stil Mucha/Liberty/etc. collections and museums...Paris, Barcelona, Salamanca, Prague, Vienna.... The Museum of the School of Nancy is the largest, most dense such collection we've seen, and by far, too. Granted, the works represented are pretty strictly by the locals, but what a group of locals it was! Names like Galle, Daum, Majorelle, Gruber, and such. The "School" really was an organization of designers, artists, and industrialists, committed not only to the "principles" of Art Nouveau but also to the mass manufacturing of such items and to making them available to the wider public. Art Nouveau never was much more than a flash in the pan of art and architecture, beautiful, but very demanding and costly, the province of the ultra-wealthy. But in Nancy, for a brief shining moment, they at least gave the (upper middle) masses a fighting chance. Then it was all enveloped in real fighting...1914 and all that...and beauty disappeared....

Between us, we took 300+ pix in the museum. Selecting, editing, and captioning even a small selection for the blog would take days, so I am going to present just a few teasers and (strongly) recommend the interested reader take the wonderful museum tour, online, and in English too, one of the best such we've experienced. It's at https://musee-ecole-de-nancy.nancy.fr/visiter/telechargez-lapplication. Do it!