Ceramic facade

Walking along the Boulevard St. Germain - from places I showed on my most recent posts (including maps) -, heading for the church Saint-Germain-des- Prés, (or Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots or whatever) I would suggest that you stop at the small garden or ancient church yard, just behind the church, and have a look at this spectacular ceramic façade which covers the gable of an adjacent building – very few people seem to pay attention.

I had great difficulties to find any information about it, but it seems that it was originally part of the Sèvres Pavillion during the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris and later put here. Why here, I don’t know, possibly that we are close to the Rue de Sèvres, which leads to Sévres and the Sèvres Manufacture? I even found the names of the creators (Charles Risier and Jules Courtan), but nothing about them. I think that this “monument” would be worth some more attention!

Let’s remember that the 1900 Universal Exhibition somehow was an “art nouveau” exhibition and that the Pont Alexandre III bridge (see my post of June 7, 2007), the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, the Gare de Lyon, the Gare d’Orsay (now the Orsay Museum) and many other buildings were created for this occasion. (Most of the pavilions were of course considered as temporary and disappeared after the exhibition.) During this Exhibition, the first metros started to run. … and the second Olympic Games took place in Paris.

(A few of these pictures can be found on my photo blog.)

Before closing for today, I wanted to show you some further spring progress in “my” park, although the weekend weather could have been better.

The weather was anyhow good enough to allow Paloma and Mattias to have some outdoor fun in the Jardin du Ranélagh.


My new “toy” is fairly new on the market and draws some attention to it!

Addendum:

Thanks to Maxime we have answers to my questions above:

Charles Risler was a Parisian architect who also designed the pavilion for the department store "Au Printemps" for the same Universal Exhibition.

Jules Félix Coutan has made several sculptures around Paris which can be found e.g. at the Palais de Justice ("La Clémence"), Opéra Comique ("Cariatides"), the National Library ("La Calligraphie"), the Bir-Hakeim Bridge ("La Science", "Le Travail"). One of his monumental works ("Les Chasseurs d'Aigles") can be found at the Orsay Museum. (You can se the Bir-Hakeim sculptures on one of my previous posts.)