THE FOUNDING OF LE
VAL D'OSNE IN OSNE-LE-VAL
The heart
of French foundries is in the so-called "iron triangle" in Champagne-Ardenne,
located in the northeast of France, bordering Belgium. It consists of four départements:
Aube, Ardennes, Haute-Marne, and Marne where one can find the three basic elements
of the old style metallurgy: steel, wood and water.
In 1833, Jean Pierre Victor André, a Parisian engineer and head of an iron foundry,
acquired the land that had once been an old Benedictine convent. He set up a
crusher (to crush the mineral) and a furnace (to smelt it). Victor André was
one of the few industrialists at the beginning of the last century who foresaw
the profits that could be made from cast iron, especially for molds and urban
decoration.
In the middle of the 19th century, Le
Val d'Osne
had 220 employees, two furnaces and two steam machines. Business was good and
Mr. André became a national figure; Louis Phillipe, the king of France, personally
awarded him a gold medal at the National Exhibition in 1844. When he died, his
wife took over the running of the business for about four years and then she
sold it to one of André's students, Gustave Barbezat, another name closely associated
with Le Val d'Osne. Barbezat built homes for the employees that lasted until
1987, when the factories were closed. This foundry provided employment to all
who sought jobs in the area.
Under the administration of its successive managers, Le Val d'Osne grew and
developed incredibly. It benefited greatly from the remodeling of Paris, organized
by Baron Haussmann, and the creation of what was then being called "urban decoration"
including wood or metal kiosks that arose from the popularity of new musical
bands and open-air concerts. This was particularly so in Belgium, Great Britain
and France, where bands and groups of singers would play and entertain on Sundays.
This custom spread all over Europe.
The music kiosk came about from legislation: open-air concerts had to be given
in places where the police could keep control. The catalogs had many different
types of kiosks: simple, ordinary, decorated or richly ornamented. The one in
Guadalajara belongs to the latter category. Its beautiful decoration indicates
that it comes from sculpture workshops and not just an iron foundry, as most
of them did.
In 1892, Le Val d'Osne joined up with another well-known artistic foundry, JJ
Ducell and between the two, they created 40,000 molds, the richest and largest
collection of molds in the world. It included large vases, statues, gates, balconies,
balustrades, fountains, candelabra, crosses for graves, chapel doors, funeral
baskets and all sorts of objects of worship. At the time, when there was a revival
in religion, cast iron decorative objects became very popular in churches, especially
abroad.
SCULPTED
HERITAGE
Bronze-work and sculpture, a sub-product of metallurgy, came into its own at
this time, driven by a cross between industrial modernity and cultural savoir-faire.
The technique used for these sculptures was sand molding. Over time, this art
would reach its height and fluid cast iron works were produced with little carbonization
and "phosphorization". Work by endless numbers of artists, from those making
the molds to those in charge of the finishing produced objects that had a very
fine silvery "skin" that looked like marble; many of the pieces were painted
white which started a debate about the uncertain artistic status of these works.
The foundries had their favorite sculptors and vice versa. The artists made
figures from the molds produced by the foundries, which allowed for mass-production.
A pantograph allowed for variations of scale without the need for large investment,
and therefore pieces like Michelangelo's Moses or the Venus de Milo came to
decorate people's homes in many different sizes.
VAL
D'OSNE - THE CONTINUATION AND THE END
The 1914 - 1918 war was the last great theme of the foundries. Badly damaged
by the war, France erected many metal statues in honor of its fallen sons. There
was a final revival of kiosks in the Thirties, although these were made of concrete
and had geometric shapes without any ornamentation.
In 1931, Val d'Osne was acquired by another foundry in Haut Marne, Durenne House
that started to produce mechanical pieces and the artistic side gradually disappeared.
This company tottered for some years and finally went bankrupt in 1987, causing
mass unemployment in the valley. Later, everything was sold as scrap metal and
in 1993 the old building came under the care of the Director of French Heritage.
There are still some of the old pieces of machinery, like an old furnace, some
parts of the building and the odd pieces here and there but they are all in
very bad state of repair. Hardly any of the 40,000 molds are left. Some were
sold but most of them were re-smelted or destroyed.
Read more about it
From Pigalle to Préault : Neoclassicism and the Sublime in French Sculpture,
1760-1840 by Alison West - published by Cambridge University Press