Art Nouveau Nancy

As mentioned, the main bit of sightseeing we got up to in Nancy was a visit to the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy, dedicated to the history of Art Nouveau in Nancy. Art Nouveau's not something I was particularly knowledgeable about. It developed in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, emerging (if I'm reading my sources correctly) pretty much in parallel in different countries around the world. In France, the Ecole de Nancy came after that of Paris, but was particularly innovative and influential, and Nancy can be considered the Art Nouveau capital of France.

Art Nouveau is characterised particularly by its use of fluid, natural forms, drawing inspiration from the natural world and incorporating elements inspired by plants, insects and animals. This helps to distinguish it from the more angular, geometric Art Deco which followed.

Another important element of Art Nouveau was the idea of "total" art, i.e. utilising a range of media from architecture to graphic design to ceramics to cabinet-making, rather than restricting the concept of "art" to painting or sculpture. The museum emphasised the idea that these pieces were originally intended as affordable art: mass-produced prints and glassware, etc., allowing even the most utilitarian object to be a work of art. It's a hard concept to get your head around these days, as certainly the museum pieces do not look anything like what we would imagine as cheap, mass-produced goods in any era. I imagine your Victorian factory workers were not coming home and putting their feet up in an Art Nouveau armchair, but perhaps these pieces were more in the range of a middle-class family than objets d'art would have been in previous centuries.

The museum is laid out in the home of the collector Eugène Corbin (although the collections and arrangement do not necessarily reflect what he would have had in his lifetime). I think it was a really good idea to use the home-style layout rather than a more typical museum look. It really helped to emphasise the ideas of "total" art, as you could see idealised versions of Art Nouveau bedrooms, dining rooms, etc. Even most of the cabinets used to display pieces of glassware and other decorative objects were mostly works of art in themselves.

I was probably largely indifferent to Art Nouveau before visiting the museum: sure, I thought it was pretty, from what I'd seen of it, but I wouldn't have called myself a fan. I probably still wouldn't go as far as that - my tastes for modern art lean more towards the abstract and geometric - but visiting the museum definitely gave me a greater appreciation for the movement. I kept thinking that my mum would love it too - she always enjoys decorative arts and design, such as the museum we visited in Oslo.

Pretty Art Nouveau building in Nancy. We couldn't find a park near the museum, which was lucky since it meant we stumbled across a beautiful street of Art Nouveau houses

My favourite room in the museum

Swanky bed

A more simplistic side of Art Nouveau

I loved how upstairs they displayed some glassware in window boxes. I've never seen this before, but it's a great idea!

Jules liked the wooden room too

A souvenir of the 1915-1916 school year from the city of Nancy. One would think it would be pretty etched in your memory regardless

Some pretty stained glass

Nature-inspired vase against the backdrop of the museum gardens

Other than that, I'm tired and stressed trying to work out the move. For some reason, all the quotes I'm getting from movers are way over budget and under-delivering on services, even though they are all meant to have agreed on fixed price limits with my new workplace. I know, I know, first world problems blah blah blah, but it really does cost a horrific amount of money to move and I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall trying to get it to budget at the moment.

My train home yesterday was delayed by half an hour, and on Thursday it was delayed *two hours*. So not fun. I'm really counting the days (not too fast though, because everything isn't organised yet) till I'm outta here - the upcoming trip to Majorca should help!

Nancy girl

This is mostly a post about Nancy (the city), but let's wrap up a few other things I've been up to lately. For Easter, I went to Jules's mum's place, where I had the pleasure of meeting half his family all at the same time. Which is obviously a massive treat and not at all scary. I lie, it was scary, I awkwardly shook his mum's hand and didn't know what to do with myself most of the time. Luckily everyone (while making an effort to speak English with me) spoke amongst themselves in Luxembourgish most of the time, so while that meant my presence at the table was mostly ornamental, it also meant I couldn't make too much of an idiot of myself. Jules theorised that they were more afraid of (speaking English with) me than I was of them, which makes me sound a bit like a spider, but I'll take it. Seriously though, everyone was very nice, it didn't go terribly, and it was nice to have something to do at Easter for the first time in many a year.

On the other hand, I have seen Jules's mum assembling a gun in her living room (I kid you not), so I think maybe I need to be on my best behaviour around her! I think that's the first time I've seen a gun not wielded by a police officer, and even then it freaks me out. Bit weird!

Over Easter, we also went for a walk around Luxembourg's Lac de la Haute Sûre, which Jules informs me is just known as "the lake" to the natives, since it's pretty much the only one in the country. It amuses me that it's the only one and it's not even a real lake - it's man-made for electricity generation. No offence, but Luxembourg, while pleasant, is a pretty featureless place. They found like a claw from a dinosaur recently - the first ever found in the country - and it was front-page news. The lake is pretty though, although most of the bit we walked around unfortunately had too many trees to really get a good view of it.

At the lake

Last weekend we decided to take advantage of perhaps the first genuinely hot and sunny weekend of the year to take a daytrip to nearby Nancy. It really was a lovely day, and Nancy is really charming. We saw the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy (separate post to follow), the Basilique Saint-Epvre, Place Stanislas and the Parc de la Pépinière, but I felt like we just scratched the surface of what there is to see in the city.

The Basilique Saint-Epvre is a 19th-C neo-gothic structure filled with some really lovely stained-glass windows. I think some of the windows may have been done by the Art Nouveau artists of the Ecole de Nancy.

Basilique Saint-Epvre

Ferdinandus O'Gorman is improbable enough a name as it is, let alone featuring in a stained-glass window in Eastern France

We had lunch in the regal (or, rather, ducal) Place Stanislas, which I recently saw featured in a list of the best places to have an apéritif in France. Most importantly, though, number one on that list was Place Plumereau in Tours, booyah! Place Stanislas is definitely more visually impressive, but it's also huge. Whereas Place Plumereau, in summer, is completely filled with café tables, and there are cafés, restaurants and bars on all sides, in Place Stanislas there are only a couple of café/restaurants on one side, with a relatively small space given to their tables. So I've got to agree that Place Plumereau probably takes this one out, although Place Stanislas is definitely a nice place to take some photos and enjoy a drink in the sunshine.

It took forever to get photos by the fountain, by the way. We arrived like 2 seconds behind this group of tourists, who remained completely oblivious to the fact that we obviously wanted to take photos too, and kept sitting on the fountain for about 10 minutes. Grrr.

Place Stanislas

Alley leading into Place Stanislas

Finally a photo with the fountain

Proof that Jules is taller than me. I did think he was, but for some reason thought only by a couple of inches and wouldn't believe him when he said he was c. 6 foot. PS someone got a little bit of a red shoulder while having lunch

Gates on the other side of Place Stanislas