Jourdain

Documenting the French design artistry of three generations of the Jourdain family, this book presents Parisian design for over a hundred years. The book's primary focus is Frantz Jourdain (1847-1935) who was a leading practitioner of Art Nouveau architecture and championed the renewal of singularly French traditions of decoration. His ideas on adornment and embellishment helped to preserve Paris as a citadel of taste and luxury in the carly twentieth century. Frantz Jourdain is best known for his design of La Samaritaine, the Paris department store. Its polychromatic horizontal panels of encrusted mosaic and ceramic tiling are indicative of the gracious adornment he insisted was necessary in the face of the harsh realitics of urban life. The design, influences, and construction of this marvelous structure is discussed and further revealed in newly-commissioned photographs of its renovation. The subject of a substantial second section is Francis Jourdakn(1876-1958), Frantz's son, who became in his own right a celebrated designer of furniture and interiors in the Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and International Styles. He was also an accomplished painter in the manner of Bonnard. Also included is the work of grandson Frantz-Philippe (b. 1906), a respected Modernist architect and member of the Optima Group.