Atelier Primavera

Few names embody the spirit of French modern decorative arts as vividly as Primavera, the design studio of the Printemps department store. For sixty years, from the eve of the First World War to the early 1970s, it brought beautifully made furniture, ceramics and objects into French homes, in small series and at accessible prices. It championed young designers, gave new life to regional craft workshops and helped define the look of Art Deco. Today its stoneware and faience in particular are prized for their inventiveness and their joyful, unmistakable charm.

The adventure began in 1912, born of a shared conviction between Pierre Laguionie, director of Le Printemps, and René Guilleré, a lawyer, collector and founder of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs. Their ambition was novel: to sell useful works of art, beautiful and well made, in small series and at affordable prices. The store saw itself less as a patron than as a sponsor, intent on drawing profit as well as prestige from the venture, and this frank alliance of art and commerce, often thought incompatible at the time, would prove one of the keys to its success. The name itself was a graceful play on words, Primavera being the Italian for spring, and so for Printemps.

Guilleré ran the studio alongside his wife, Charlotte Chauchet, an accomplished painter and decorator, and together they gathered a circle of young and fashionable talents. Louis Sognot and Marcel Guillemard were recruited for furniture, while ceramics and objects drew on designers such as Madeleine Sougez, Claude Lévy, Paule Petitjean, Hélène Gatelet and Marcelle Thiénot. The example soon spread: after the war, the Galeries Lafayette entrusted Maurice Dufrêne with La Maîtrise, and Le Bon Marché gave Paul Follot the direction of Pomone.

Ceramics lay at the heart of Primavera's identity. Faithful to Guilleré's passion for regional craftsmanship, the studio called on artisan workshops across France, including Elchinger in Alsace, Paul Jacquet in Savoie and Lucien Arnaud in Puisaye, as well as manufactories such as Longwy, Quimper, Malicorne and Céramique d'Art de Bordeaux (CAB). It also acquired its own faience works at Sainte-Radegonde, near Tours, which allowed it to design and produce independently.

The 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs brought its consecration. Primavera's pavilion was one of the four department-store pavilions placed at the corners of the exhibition, and these were among its principal attractions. The temple-like building drew criticism for its grandeur, but its interior, conceived by Charlotte Chauchet-Guilleré, was admired for its elegance and refinement.

After Guilleré's death in 1931, a new era opened under Colette Guéden. She had joined the design studio in 1927, took charge of it in 1934 and served as Primavera's artistic director from 1938 to 1972. Under her guidance the studio's style evolved, with ceramics produced at Sainte-Radegonde and at Sèvres, and from 1943 a collaboration with the ceramicist Pol Chambost that would flourish after the war. When the studio closed its doors in the early 1970s, it left behind an extraordinarily rich body of work, a living record of six decades of French taste.