Decorative Sunday
A few months ago we shared plates from the Industrial and Applied Arts publication L’Art Pour Tous. That magazine has two direct connections to the subject of today’s post, the influential Dictionnaire Raisonné de L’architecture Française. The magazine’s director, Claude Sauvegeot, was a student of the Dictionaire’s author, architect and medievalist Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, and was published by A. Morel, who took up editorship of the Dictionnaire after the death of the original publisher, Balthazar Bance.
The ten volumes that comprise the Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire were published in Paris from 1854 through 1868, with Bance publishing the first six volumes. The Dictionary’s entries are illustrated by hundreds of wood engravings. Bance’s son Albert, still a minor at the time of his father’s death, was slated to succeeded him at the helm of the multi-generational Bance publishing business. However, Balthazar’s leadership of the Bance firm had been been marred by financial hardships, and a portion of Bance’s commercial contracts were actioned off, including the rights to the Dictionnaire.
Those publishing rights were snapped up by August-Jean Morel. Morel went on to publish the last four volumes, as well as establish an important relationship with Viollet-le-Duc. Founded by Morel in the late 1840′s, Veuve A. Morel et Cie. and its associated bookshop specialized in finely produced books on art, architecture, and design. The firm remained operational for decades after Morel’s death in 1869, under the management of Morel’s widow and with active involvement from Viollet-le-Duc himself.
You can find more Decorative Sunday posts here.
-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern
