Eye of Art #8 : Gonzague Mézin (Maison Lignereux)

A weekly series to share my art discovery with first the work that caught my eye...
Generally, I'm not a fan of Decorative Arts but I saw this sculpture, Mighty Fountain. So Intrigued, I wanted to know more about it and thanks to Google Image, I could go back to the creator :-).

Mighty Fountain, Lignereux, 2017

WHO

First the history, Maison Lignereux was founded in Paris in 1787 to produce objets d'art like clocks, vases.... Soon after, in 1789, an office was opened in London, the first art gallery to have offices in both cities. But, in 1804, the company stopped its activities with the founder's desease founder, Martin-Eloy Lignereux. Somes examples of the production of this time :

But in 2015 at the instigation of Gonzague Mézin, Maison Lignereux was revived in order to make new creations of art objects for international art collectors. Gonzague Mézin works closely with artisans to produce it with inspiration from past and today :

• Atelier Cabiria (bronziers d’art),
• Thiébaut Chagué (ceramicist),
• Tanya Gomez (ceramicist),
• Laura Murphy (ceramicist),
• Samuel Yal (sculptor-ceramicist).

You can check theirs website, amazing works... Gonzague Mézin knows how surround himself with quality people. He studied at HEC (Paris) in cultural management with a course in art History at Sorbonne (Paris). First work at Château de Versailles then Sotheby's and cabinetmaker Benoit Blaise in Paris. Then, thanks to a job with art insurer Hiscox, he got to know the world of art collectors. But working on the outskirts of art was no longer enough for him, so he started with Maison Lignereux.

Breathing Earth, 2016-2017 with Thiébaut Chagué (ceramicist) and Atelier Cabiria (Bronziers d’art)

WHAT

For the first works, the inspiration comes from the poem Kubla Khan of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), mutual fascination between East and West. Gonzague Mézin looked also to the Lignereux archives with ormolu-mounted porcelains. The four sculptures represent the four elements :

• Water with Mighty Fountain,
• Mighty Fountain with Breathing Earth,
• Fire with Voices,
• and Air with the mobile Pleasure-Dome.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail
Poem Kubla Khan

Voices, 2017 with Samuel Yal (sculptor-ceramicist), and Atelier Cabiria (Bronziers d’art)

Sources

Lignereux
Lignereux on Wiki
Atelier Cabiria
Thiébaut Chagué
Tanya Gomez
Laura Murphy
Samuel Yal
Poem Kubla-khan

Pleasure-Dome, 2017, with Laura Murphy (ceramicist) and Atelier Cabiria (Bronziers d’art)

Old Post Eye of Art

Eye of Art #7 : Sarah Anne Johnson
Eye of Art #6 : Bharti Kher
Eye of Art #5 Luiz Zerbini