Important Chinese Vase In Boiled Cardboard, Fiber And Mother-of-pearl Marquetry

Important Chinese vase in boiled cardboard, fiber and mother-of-pearl marquetry. Mother-of-pearl decoration of oriental landscapes and birds on flowering branches on an orange-red and black background. Very large size. An accident on the base, but without any consequences on its stability and invisible once the vase is placed on it. 20th century. Dimensions: Total height with the base: 141 cm Height of the vase alone: 116 cm Neck diameter: 38 cm In the 19th and 20th centuries, furniture and decorative objects were made of papier-mâché. This manufacturing technique was very popular in France and Europe in the mid-19th century, under Napoleon III, and in the 20th century. One family particularly distinguished itself in the manufacture of papier-mâché objects: the Adts. In the Saarland region, there is a village called Ensheim. In the 18th century, the local miller, Mathias Adt, had the idea of making wooden snuff boxes. This was the beginning of the great epic of snuff boxes and the most diverse articles made for all sorts of uses. Mathias learned of the invention made by a Parisian printer who had the idea of sticking sheets of paper on top of each other: papier-mâché was born. The miller's eight sons, then their descendants, developed production by improving it thanks to all the technological innovations of the 19th century. Steam presses, for example, were a decisive contribution in terms of the variety of shapes and quality of the most diverse articles made from papier-mâché. But the pitfalls were also numerous and varied. Including in the customs area where the taxes to be paid were high. This is why Peter Adt III, Mathias' great-grandson, structured his business by creating the Adt brothers company in 1839 for his three sons Franz, Peter and Jean-Baptiste. The new company considered setting up in Forbach, France having in the meantime become a very buoyant market, particularly for snuff boxes (at that time tobacco was "sniffed"). A first attempt in 1844 came to nothing and after three years, the Adts moved to Sarreguemines. Probably attracted by the fact that Forbach was served by the railway from November 1851, and even connected to Saarbrücken a year later, the Adts came to settle permanently in Forbach in May 1853. They produced papier-mâché objects industrially and in large series. They specialized more particularly in objects and tableware: trays, candy boxes, coolers, bread baskets, cutlery baskets, boxes, etc. but also furniture, tables, chairs, sideboards, etc. They produced a large amount until the beginning of the 20th century. Papier-mâché could adapt to the most capricious and astonishing shapes. Craftsmen made exceptional furniture imitating lacquered wood or bamboo. From 1860, the emperor campaigned in China. Chinese and Japanese patterns were then very successful. Light, strong, inexpensive, paper became the astonishing raw material for some of the furniture during the Second Empire. We spoke of the Napoleon III style in France and the Victorian style in England. After the Second World War, the papier-mâché industry declined because the evolution of chemicals made it possible to manufacture plastic objects (trays for example). Nowadays, papier-mâché has become artisanal again, and the objects are produced mainly in Asian countries.