Maurice Pillard Verneuil and the Art Nouveau

Illustration: M P Verneuil. Design work, 1897.

Maurice Pillard Verneuil was born in 1869 and showed early promise with his draughtsman-like quality drawing skills. He became an assistant to the great Swiss/French artist and graphic designer Eugene Grasset. Grasset himself was heavily influenced by the traditional flat design and block colour techniques of Japanese printmaking and from here Verneuil was to both follow and then create a style that was chiefly of his own construction..

Illustration: M P Verneuil. Design work, 1897.

Verneuil was soon producing poster work in Paris alongside the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec and Cheret. Although today Verneuil is very often not linked with the likes of Lautrec, he was at the time recognised as a talented decorative artist, as these designs produced by him in 1897, clearly show.

Verneuil has used a keen observant eye to capture the flora and fauna portrayed in his design work. Birds, fish, squirrels and other animals are ingeniously intertwined with luxurious plants and flowers, though none seem to actually touch each other, or if they do, it is with the merest wisp.

Illustration: M P Verneuil. Design work, 1897.

Verneuil has captured one of the major characteristics of the Art Nouveau style, namely its undulating and intertwining forms, and transformed it into an elegant ballet between flora and fauna.

The animals become motifs on a full, textured background, with the repeat being subtle enough not to appear as if as a formal and rigidly set stamp repeat, as it often can with so many lesser skilled patterned pieces.

Illustration: M P Verneuil. Design work, 1897.

These designs are from one of the many pattern books that were used in the nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries, throughout Europe. The books are a great reference library of the stylistic routes that design took through the decades that saw the rise of Gothic medievalism, through the countless Victorian Revivals to Art Nouveau and then onto the Art Deco period.

What is interesting is that Verneuil was able to straddle both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. Not an easy task as the two styles although often appearing to have at least some similar traits, have many more differences in their main character.

Illustration: M P Verneuil. Design work, 1897.

Verneuil went on to produce work into the 1920s that was sharply abstract in style. The design work was Art Deco in nature, but like the work shown here, was much more than the standard fair with a convenient style name attached to it.

Verneuil, and others like him, should be better known today than they generally are. They consistently produced high quality design work over a long period, through many different styles and forms of decoration. Without them the design and decorative world would be a much poorer place.

Further reading links:
Maurice Pillard-Verneuil: Artiste decorateur de l'Art nouveau, 1869-1942 (French Edition)
Patterns and Designs from the Twenties in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Art Nouveau Animal Designs and Patterns: 60 Plates in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archive)
Laurenol No. 2 Art Print Poster by M.P. Verneuil
Abstract Art: Patterns and Designs
Water Lily II HIGH QUALITY CANVAS Print With Light Added BRUSHSTROKES M. P. Verneuil 10x18
Decorative Flowers: After the Plates by M.P. Verneuil
250 Authentic Art Nourveau Borders in Full Color (Pictorial Archive)
Arts And Crafts Oak MUSEUM WRAP CANVAS Print With Added Heavy BRUSHSTROKES M. P. Verneuil 18x24
Hazel Tree MUSEUM WRAP CANVAS Print With Added Heavy BRUSHSTROKES M. P. Verneuil 10x13
Water Lily I Art Poster PRINT M. P. Verneuil 10x18
M.p. Verneuil - Cardus Size 11.75x15.75 MUSEUM WRAP CANVAS Print With Added Heavy BRUSHSTROKES M. P. Verneuil 12x16

Donegal Carpets

In 1898 the Scottish textile company Alexander Morton & Co founded a hand woven rug factory in County Donegal, Ireland. This was to become the well-known Donegal Carpet Company. From its first launch, the company employed the very best and most fashionable designers of the day, including the likes of Walter Crane, Jessie Newbery, Mackay Baillie Scott and Charles Francis Annesley Voysey.

Because of the extensive contact network already established by Morton & Co, Donegal Carpets were able to sell their fashionable Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts style rugs and carpets at such prestigious outlets as Liberty & Co in London and Gustav Stickley's Craftsman showrooms in Boston and New York.

The carpets and rugs produced by the company were extremely popular with the fashion conscious middle classes on both sides of the Atlantic. The company had everything going for it. The designs were by some of the most fashionable designers of the day, they were all in vibrant colours, and they were in bold, contemporary styles.

One of the most prolific designers for Donegal Carpets was C F A Voysey. Voysey and Alexander Morton had formed a close working partnership. They were both of Irish origin, both had a passion for design and textiles in particular, and above all, an overriding interest in producing the best quality, contemporary textile design work that was possible.

Interestingly, the original concept for the idea of a hand woven rug factory had come from Liberty & Co. The retail company had approached Alexander Morton with the idea of producing carpets at a cheaper rate than Morris & Co one of the main suppliers of art style carpets in Britain. Morton was amenable and with the help of Liberty, Voysey and some financial backing from the British Government, Donegal Carpets was established. The west of Ireland was chosen for the abundance of cheap labour.

Liberty's initial suggestion had created a company that, by its very nature, was in direct competition with Morris & Co. There is a possibility that Liberty's approached Morton in order to help widen the market. By encouraging competition with Morris & Co, Liberty might have hoped for a form of price war between the two companies, with Liberty the eventual winner.

However, what did happen is that Donegal carpets retailed, for a number of reasons, at less than half the price of Morris's carpets and quickly squeezed Morris out of the middle class market, leaving Donegal Carpets to dominate while Morris & Co retreated to the higher end of the market.

All the carpets shown here were designed by Voysey and produced by Donegal Carpets. They are mostly in what would be classed as an Art Nouveau style, not dissimilar in many respects to those designed by William Morris.

However, Voysey's designs gave the appearance of being much more fashionable and contemporary looking than Morris's work. This no doubt has much to do with the general interest at the beginning of the twentieth century in designs derived from Celtic motifs and styles, in which Voysey's work, though not entirely devoted to the style, does bare certain similarities. It would also have helped the ambience of the product that the carpets were being produced on the west coast of Ireland a percieved traditional stronghold of Celtic culture. This no doubt helped when marketing the carpets at such outlets as Liberty & Co, which had already cornered the market in Celtic styled interior accessories.

From the start Alexander Morton was determined that Donegal carpets would be a high quality production. He hoped to draw comparisons with the best in Turkish and Persian carpet production, though there was always a concerted effort not to produce copies of these styles which would always have been but pale imitations.

By marrying the best of British contemporary designers with the best in traditional carpet weaving techniques, Donegal carpets assured itself a prestigious place in the history of European carpet design.

Further reading links: 
A Donegal Carpet Designed by Gavin Morton and G.K. Robertson, Circa 1900 Artists Giclee Poster Print by Adler & Sullivan , 9x12
A Donegal Carpet Designed by Gavin Morton and G.K. Robertson, Circa 1900 Giclee Poster Print by Adler & Sullivan , 24x32
Donegal Carpets Film
Treasures of early Irish art, 1500 B.C. to 1500 A.D: From the collections of the National Museum of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Dublin
Irish Art and Architecture: From Prehistory to the Present
Irish Art: A Concise History (World of Art)
Early Christian Irish Art
The Golden Age of Irish Art: The Medieval Achievement, 600-1200
British And Irish Home Arts And Industries 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion
Studies in Early Christian and Medieval Irish Art, Volume III: Sculpture and Architecture 

The Deutscher Werkbund

Illustration: Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition, 1914.

Within the first few years of the twentieth century, certain aspects of German design was beginning to show signs that it was moving away from the formula of mainstream decorative styles, but perhaps more importantly, it was beginning to drift away from the precepts and philosophy of the Arts & Crafts movement, towards a more utilitarian form of design work.

Richard Riemerschmid was an early advocate for the concept that design should align itself much more closely with the world of manufacturing. He argued that the only way that well designed products could be produced at an affordable price was by the use and help of mass production. With this argument, Riemerschmid set himself squarely against the philosophy that had been adopted at an early stage and was headed by the English Arts and Crafts movement.

Many in Germany were convinced that the British were mistaken in their attitude of mistrust and antagonism towards industry, and that the Arts and Crafts movement, while having a worthwhile philosophy of hand made products for all, were in fact producing small amounts of very expensive goods purely for the wealthy consumer. The poorer and largest section of the community, while having the Arts & Crafts sympathy, were largely ignored by the movement.

The Deutscher Werkbund was founded in 1907 as an organisation that was to bind together both designer and manufacturer in a worthwhile relationship that was meant to be of benefit to both sides of the manufacturing equation, the creative and the profit led. Among the founding members were Richard Riemerschmid, Peter Behrens, Josef Maria Olbrich and Bruno Paul. However, also included were a number of manufacturers such as Poeschel & Trepte and Peter Bruckmann & Sohne. Interestingly, a number of design groups were included within the structure of the Deutscher Werkbund, incorporating such prestigious organizations as the Wiener Werkstatte and the Vereinigte Wekstatten fur Kunst im Handwerk.

Illustration: Deutscher Werkbund Yearbook, 1913.

In 1912, the Werkbund started to publish a yearbook that included a list of addresses and, perhaps more importantly, the various specialisations of its members, which by 1915 had reached nearly two thousand.

However, not all was harmonious within the Werkbund as the old issue of craftsmanship versus industrial production kept recurring, as not all members were convinced that mass production methods were compatible with the individual ideal of the craftsman. It was felt by some members that designers were having to make too many compromises in order to accommodate the machine.

By the end of the First World War, much of this debate had become irrelevant. By the start of the twentieth century, the explosion within the European consumer culture meant that the only way that supply could ever meet demand was through the standardisation and mass production of products.

In 1924, the Werkbund published Form ohne Ornament (Form without Function). This milestone publication praised industrially produced design work that showed brutally plain surfaces lacking in any form of ornamentation or decoration. The road was set irreversibly towards Functionalism.

The Deutscher Werkbund was closed down in 1934 by the Nazi party. However, by then it was far too late to stem the flow of contemporary design work and practises. The Nazis hoped to turn back the tide and dismantle Modernism, but what they saw as an aberration or an unfortunate fashion fad, was much deeper than they imagined. Modernism survived because it was a movement that was convinced that good design married to mass-production was the answer to affordable consumer goods for everyone, not just the few who could afford it. Interestingly the Nazi's, often more pragmatic than not, used Modernism and its ideals when it suited their needs.

When we consider the world we live in today. We all sit in front of our computers, but only because they are not hand crafted. They are mass-produced in order to make them available to everyone at an affordable price. We may well bemoan the situation we find ourselves in and the one we have willingly made for ourselves. We now live in a world where hand production is no longer the norm. We have become ensnared in the ever-tightening mesh of the consumer market. Many feel we have lost more than we have gained, but that is perhaps a prospect for future generations to analyze.

Further reading links:
The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War
The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts
German Design for Modern Living
German Design 1870-1918
German Modern: Graphic Design from Wilhelm to Weimar (Art Deco Design)
Masterpieces of German Design (Masterpieces of Design)
Towards Post-Modernism: Decorative Arts and Design Since 1851
Modernism in Design (Reaktion Books - Critical Views)
Modernism: Modernist Design 1880-1940 : The Norwest Collection, Norwest Corporation, Minneapolis
Modernism in Art, Design and Architecture
Henry Ford: Mass Production, Modernism and Design (Studies in Design and Material Culture)
Design in the Twentieth Century: Birth of Modernism (1900s-1910s)
Modernism: Designing a New World
Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius; Revised and Expanded Edition