Louis Majorelle

Louis-Jean-Sylvestre Majorelle, usually known simply as Louis Majorelle, (Toul, 26 September 1859 – Nancy, 15 January 1926) was a French decorator and furniture designer who manufactured his own designs, in the French tradition of the ébéniste. He was one of the outstanding designers of furniture in the Art Nouveau style, and after 1901 formally served as one of the vice-presidents of the École de Nancy.

In 1861, his father, Auguste Majorelle (1825 – 1879), who himself was a furniture designer and manufacturer, moved the family from Toul to Nancy. There, Louis finished his initial studies before moving to Paris in 1877 for two years of work at the École des Beaux-Arts. On the death of his father, he cut short his studies and returned to Nancy to oversee the family's manufactories of faience and furniture. This would occupy him for the rest of his life.

On 7 April 1885, Majorelle married Marie Léonie Jane Kretz, daughter of the director of the municipal theaters in Nancy. Their only child, Jacques Majorelle, who himself would become an artist, was born 7 March 1886.

In February 1901, Majorelle became one of the founding members of the École de Nancy, alternatively known as the Alliance provinciale des industries d'art, which was a group of artists, architects, art critics, and industrialists in Lorraine who decided to work in a collaborative fashion, and predominantly in the Art Nouveau style. They, headed by Gallé (until his death in 1904, and thereafter by Victor Prouvé) did this for several reasons, chief among which was to ensure a high standard of quality of work in the French decorative arts, of which Lorraine artists were the chief producers at the time. Majorelle was one of the vice-presidents of the group from the outset, remained so throughout the existence of the École de Nancy, and was certainly considered one of the group's leaders. For the most part, he and the other members worked to promote the work of Lorraine decorative artists through their advocacy of the establishment of a school for industrial arts, their participation at major exhibitions (as well as organizing their own shows), and through their collaborative efforts on individual art pieces and buildings, almost all of which were in the Art Nouveau style, and which helped produce to some extant a unity among the art and architecture produced by Lorrainers. Majorelle was consistently one of the internationally-renowned figures of the group who could always be found at any show at which the group exhibited. His connections with the Parisian art circles also helped assure the renown of Lorraine artists in the French capital. The École de Nancy, however, was often in short supply of funding, and the formal artistic cooperation among its members slowly seemed to disintegrate during the First World War.