France Merges Institutions to Help Support Its Artisans
'To understand the richness of these crafts, you have to see them practiced,' Mr. Lemoine, 63, said on a video call from the factory's 19th-century complex on the outskirts of Paris. Since 7:30 that morning, he had been watching the factory's artisans create the crushed quartz and mineral clay paste used in Sèvres' celebrated porcelain and finish items with 24-karat gold, powdered in-house from ingots.
Such savoir-faire, developed in ateliers throughout France over centuries, is precisely what the Ministry of Culture wants the new organization to safeguard, champion and transmit.
The organization is a merger of two of France's well-known institutions: the Mobilier National, an aggregation of factories, ateliers and a collection of 130,000 antique and contemporary furnishings and objets d'art, and the Cité de la Céramique — Sèvres et Limoges, which included Sèvres and two ceramics museums. The headquarters of the Mobilier National in Paris, an aggregation of factories, ateliers and a collection of 130,000 antique and contemporary furnishings and objets d'art. Credit... LACEN
It has come at what appears to be a positive time for the decorative arts. Demand for the skills of France's almost 250,000 craft businesses is strong, Mr. Lemoine said, noting that the sector represents several tens of billions of euros in annual sales. But very small ateliers can have difficulty meeting demand, so the industry remains fragile.
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