Paris, Paris: Journey Into the City of Light (25 page)

A few examples followed. Paris spends millions of dollars annually to restore the roofs and wooden structures of the city’s churches, it seems, and further millions remodeling townhouses like the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais. It houses the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme or MAHJ, the Jewish Art and History Museum. Additionally the city commonly spends about half a million dollars annually restoring works of art, furniture, books, woodwork, and so on, mainly in municipal museums and warehouses, those dusty repositories of micro-history rarely visited and most often unloved. The Museum of the History of Hospitals isn’t exactly the Musée d’Orsay, but it and others like it keep dozens of crafts workers busy.

From the historical perspective, the number of artisans plummeted early in the twentieth century, the spokesperson explained to me, and again after World War II because of industrialization and standardization. Handmade or custom goods couldn’t compete or simply went out of fashion. The French crafts industry seems to have bottomed out in the 1990s. Supply and demand are now more or less in balance.

Despite the loss of thousands of ateliers, the Marais and Faubourg Saint-Antoine are still Paris’s main crafts districts, though you might not think so upon casual inspection. Both have undergone profound changes in recent decades. That’s a polite way of saying they’ve been gentrified to the brink of extinction. Redevelopment, real estate speculation, and the restoration of landmark properties in the Marais led from the 1970s onward to the destruction or conversion of scores of workshops that in the nineteenth or early twentieth century had been dropped into palatial courtyards, or added between wings of
hôtels particuliers
(townhouses). Ever poetic, local architects and building authorities call these drop-in structures “pustules.” The add-ons go instead by the name “parasites.” By shedding their pustules, parasites, and—unfortunately—the artisans who worked in them, many townhouses have come full circle, reclaiming their pre-Revolutionary architectural beauty while losing their souls.

The story is somewhat different I discovered in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, still the city’s woodworking and furniture district. Redevelopment over the past twenty years has led to the demolition of entire city blocks, where many a workshop lurked in a dingy back courtyard. Take a walk from the Bastille north along Rue de la Roquette then down Rue du Basfroi and you’ll get a glimpse of how much has been reconfigured.

Even in neighborhoods spared by developers the usual combination of rising rents, stricter anti-pollution laws, and lack of parking and warehouse space began squeezing out crafts workers in the 1980s. Most of them migrated east, to places such as Vincennes, Saint-Mandé, Saint-Maur, and Montreuil. Many moved even farther into the suburbs, so far out that it’s unfair to count them as Parisians.

In the too-little, too-late department, government officials have tried various means to stem the flow or lure some crafts workers back. Particularly desirable are sculptors, cabinetmakers, and decorators, whose activities are judged less “polluting.” That means they’re less noisy or dangerous than other crafts in a crowded inner-city context. About twenty-five years ago Paris began re-housing its beleaguered artisans in new, light-industrial buildings, most of them sited in the 11th arrondissement. A handful of other complexes were tossed up in the 13th arrondissement (the Vincent-Auriol and Tolbiac quarters) and the 20th arrondissement.

As you might expect these modern workshops lack the charm of yesteryear, and some nostalgic artisans I have spoken with lambaste the city for having created sterile environments while allowing speculators to destroy historical properties. Others point out that these new ateliers are better lit, warmer, and safer than many of the funky, vintage sites they replaced, and that, generally speaking, the artisans lucky enough to have found a place in them are satisfied.

Why not judge for yourself, I often ask friends who inquire about Paris’s craftsmen. You can get an idea of what these new complexes are like by visiting the Cité Artisanale de l’Allée Verte, built in the 1980s. My wife used to get her banged-up old cameras fixed there—until digital photography came along. One day while she talked shutters and flash cords I wandered around and met a fifth-generation engraver named Gérard Desquand.

One moment Desquand was stooped over his cluttered workbench like Albrecht Dürer, magnifying lens and antique engraver’s point in hand. The next he was designing a family crest on his computer. He smiled and shrugged in one telling gesture, unused to talking about himself. His workshop is called G4 Gravure. He set it up in 1986 with three partners. Like his father before him, Desquand won the Meilleur Ouvrier de France award, the country’s highest craft recognition. He might miss the cozy old family workshop but he did not say so to me. His clients have included fashion houses like Yves Saint Laurent and Dior; and famous Paris stationers or genealogists such as Stern, Agry, or Benneton Graveur. Private clients, he said, making sure I took note, need only provide drawings or a description to commission an engraving from him. Many aristocratic families rely on Desquand, for he specializes in heraldry and, he boasted, once engraved the royal devices of the Comte de Paris, the now deceased pretender to the throne of France. Yes, there is a throne of France, he assured me. It lodges in the minds of passionate Royalists, of whom there are several hundred thousand. Detractors consider them a royal pain in the Republic.

Since then Desquand has moved into his own workshop a few blocks away in Rue d’Oberkampf, but Paris officials have continued to re-house other artisans like him in similar, purpose-built complexes in the neighborhood.

It’s clear, however, that the enthusiasm of the pen-pusher-and-bulldozer set lies elsewhere. Specifically, it abides in a visibly impressive and publicly accessible urban project that was initiated in 1987: the Viaduc des Arts. It took ten years to reconvert the arches of the mid-nineteenth-century former railroad viaduct on Avenue Daumesnil east of the Bastille into a showcase for the city’s upscale arts and crafts. The official inauguration took place in October 1998. The Viaduc des Arts stretches about half a mile with perhaps sixty shops tucked under its arches. This being Paris, several cafés and restaurants are at hand to slake shoppers’ thirst. This being France, there is also a good deal of government money being spent by organizations that hide behind acronyms, including VIA (Valorisation de l’Innovation dans Ameublement), which promotes contemporary furniture and design.

The eye-catching activities of the artisans, and the attractively landscaped Promenade Plantée linear garden that runs on top of the viaduct, have turned the Avenue Daumesnil into a favorite walking, biking, and window-shopping area. You could, I suppose, spend several days visiting the workshops and boutiques here, though most passersby simply pause and peer into the tall plate-glass windows. Behind them ceramists paint plates, puppet makers make puppets, glass blowers blow baubles, and so forth, all of them doing their tricks in public view. The artisans double as performers. Luckily some of them obviously enjoy hamming it up and the others manage to forget they’re the monkeys at the zoo.

Here’s a curious fact to consider: while the Viaduc des Arts has had an enthusiastic reception by Parisians, and appears to be a commercial success, most of the artisans working there came from the provinces, not from Paris workshops. I once chatted with the only family of artisans from town that I could find, the affable Michel Fey et al., a clan of tooled-leather workers whose great grandfather André created Maison Fey in 1900. Until the late 1990s, said Michel as he stretched a hide, the family workshop occupied two dank, cluttered ground-floor spaces in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine a few blocks away. Michel added that though he and his son Christophe continue to use century-old tools to craft or restore leather desks or tabletops and blotting pads, the family is thoroughly delighted to have moved into their light, airy, modern space. As they toil, not only can they see trees and passersby. They also have easy parking and freight loading areas, and three times as much space as before. They pay more rent but that’s offset by higher turnover because of increased visibility. So everyone is delighted.

Fey confirmed that he is among the few craftsmen who moved from the 11th arrondissement to the Viaduc. I asked him why other Parisians hadn’t followed. “Because,” he whispered, “most Paris artisans are secretive, conservative, traditional, ornery, and obsessively independent.” As if that weren’t enough, he added, many old-timers simply couldn’t afford the move, or were discouraged from making it by the commission responsible for allotting space. As the project’s name suggests, the emphasis at the Viaduc des Arts is
l’artisanat d’art
, meaning arty things that are pretty, quiet, clean, and good for the city’s image.

I was pleased for Fey, just as I was for the artisans of the modern, soulless complexes I’d visited earlier. Still, it was as gratifying as it was saddening for me to revisit three of the city’s premier artisans in the atmospheric Marais workshops I’d seen when I first moved to the neighborhood in the mid-1980s. Two were still active, while the third was heading into retirement and selling up. That’s where I started my artisan hunt, chez Patrick Desserme, the glass-molder on Rue du Pont aux Choux.

When the Bastille was stormed and dismantled in 1789 some of the stones were used to build the glassworks where, until recently, Desserme, a third-generation
bombeur de verre
, molded magnificent globes, camber-windows, clock crystals, and lantern panes. Wearing T-shirts even in winter, the feisty Desserme and his assistant were working in the infernal heat of half a dozen furnaces (including one wood-burner from the eighteenth century).

Wiping away sweat, Desserme growled that he was among a handful of European glass-molders still using artisan techniques. With more than five thousand new and antique molds strewn and stacked around his workshop, he boasted that he could replace glass elements of everything from Louis XV lanterns to postmodern furniture. His grandfather worked with Lalique, he said, his father with Max Ingrand. He himself teamed up with contemporary design gurus the likes of Philippe Starck, Andrée Putman, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, or Garouste and Bonetti. Whether his son and successor Hugues would do the same he did not know.

The reclusive Desserme was a rarity among glass-molders in that he also created pieces for collectors, one-of-a-kind glass consoles, for instance, or tables and objets d’art, though he never advertised this fact, and indeed preferred to be left alone. Because of the dangerous nature of glass molding, the fate of the family workshop in Paris was writ large. Luxurious private apartments have recently taken its place. But Desserme’s son Hugues did decide to carry on the family craft, independently, in Rouen, far from Paris.

A five-minute walk from Desserme’s furnaces is Gilbert Rotival’s cupboard-sized atelier. Like his father and grandfather before him, Rotival, a tooled-leather craftsman and case-maker, was named Meilleur Ouvrier de France. Though beyond retirement age, he carries on the tradition in an utterly impractical but magical workshop wedged into the ground floor of a 1637 townhouse. Rotival’s buttery-soft wallets are worth more than the money in them, unless you’re carrying very large bills. His jewelry cases are as precious as the stones they hold—more precious, if you ask me. Quiet, kind, and shy, Rotival showed me again the vintage tools and century-old sewing machine he uses to transform dyed and gilded leather into attaché cases, handbags and steamer trunks for the lucky few, or for companies like Cartier and Morabito. I asked him what his most memorable job had been. He thought then spoke quietly. “An elaborate leather-covered treasure chest for Saudi King Fahd’s collection of priceless gold objects,” he said at last. “It took me and five assistants more than two hundred man-hours to make.”

I reflected on that number: two hundred man-hours for a treasure chest. I wondered if King Fahd had appreciated it. By the time I’d thought that through, and considered its geopolitical ramifications, I’d walked up Rue des Francs-Bourgeois and turned north on a side street, Rue Elzévir. Here, about sixty years ago, a wood sculptor named Jean Renouvel began his working life as a humble apprentice. He carved his way to the top. About thirty years ago Renouvel began training a young, timid apprentice named Anne-Marie Nicolle. In the early 1990s when I first met them, Renouvel and Nicolle were working together to recreate wood panels for Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir at the Petit Trianon in Versailles. Nicolle, as shy as ever, eventually took over the workshop. But nothing in or about it has changed. Antique sculpted wood and plaster casts—used as models—hang from the ceiling above cupids and Corinthian capitals, festoons and friezes. When I met Renouvel for the first time he told me he absolutely refused to use new chisels and gouges for the simple reason that they were no better, and were usually considerably less good, than the heavy, cumbersome tools he’d inherited in the 1950s. Nicolle, now a middle-aged woman and herself a crafts master, has inherited Renouvel’s twelve hundred antique tools and is quietly following his example.

Dear Dead Vincent van Gogh