PRIMAVERA – Art Deco poodle in glazed earthenware – 1926-28

PRIMAVERA THE SPRING ART WORKSHOP – 1912-1972
In September 1912, the department store Le Printemps created a production structure for modern furniture and art objects, called Atelier Primavera.
This unprecedented initiative, taken by René Guilleré, founder of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs and Pierre Laguionie, young manager of Printemps, who proposed to provide the Parisian store with a production structure for modern furniture and art objects, constitutes a crucial moment in the evolution of design in the 20th century.
The decoration and all its components, furniture, carpets, lighting, upholstery, tableware, and above all, art glassware and ceramic trinkets, presented with pomp at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exhibition, thus, through a powerful commercial tool, put innovation and modernity in the field of decorative arts within everyone's reach.
The updating of forms under the influence of Cubism will be implemented by talented creators like Claude Lévy and Madeleine Sougez, lovers of contemporary themes such as sports, jazz, Russian Ballets and, thanks to the modernist spirit of Louis Sognot and the timely intervention of Jacques Viénot, founder of industrial aesthetics, the way will be opened towards the democratization of furniture consumption.
Deeply affected by the crisis of the 30s and destroyed by the war, Primavera owed its unexpected rebirth to its director, Colette Gueden, who joined the Atelier in 1927 at the age of twenty-two. With courage, intelligence and flair, she made it, during the 50s and 60s, thanks to her inventive and fanciful events, one of the most fashionable places in the capital, where, for the last time, creation succeeded in asserting its primacy over commerce.
Bibliography

Primavera, the Spring Art Workshop 1912-1972

Alain-René Hardy, Gérard Tatin

Faton Editions / Twentieth Plus, 2014