Gustave Serrurier-Bovy
With Paul Hankar, Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde, he was one of the leading Belgian representatives of Art Nouveau.
In 1884, Gustave Serrurier married Maria Bovy who worked as a saleswoman in the artwork store of Armand Rassenfosse's parents.
After her marriage, Maria Serrurier-Bovy founded her own shop, selling exotic objects imported from Asia, while Gustave Serrurier pursued his career as an architect.
His aesthetic vision as an interior designer is summed up in one sentence in a booklet entitled Album d'Intérieurs: "To be beautiful, a set of furniture and decoration needs above all simplicity in the lines, harmony in the colours and consistency in the proportions".
Gustave Serrurier was highly receptive to this revival of the applied arts, which concerned all aspects of interior design: furniture, wallpaper, tapestries, hangings and metalwork.
He was to maintain close relationships with several of the artists of this movement, most notably with Arthur Mackmurdo, Charles-F. Annesley Voysey and Walter Crane.
This Cabinet de Travail was a great success and established Gustave Serrurier as a key contributor to the revival of home design.
That same year, he founded a group called L'Oeuvre Artistique, which organised in Liège an international exhibition devoted mainly to applied arts.
For Hector Guimard, it was an opportunity to travel to Belgium and discover the work of Victor Horta, which was to have a major influence on his future projects.
For the dining room, he designed a sideboard featuring a beautiful set of entrelacing, curved line compositions that characterised many of his creations of that period.
That same year, at the Tervuren Colonial Exhibition, he presented an original composition consisting of large arches, the ends of which formed bench seats.
In 1900, Gustave Serrurier opened in Paris L'art dans l'habitation, both an exhibition and a sales house, with René Dulong as concessionaire.
At the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition, Gustave Serrurier collaborated with René Dulong to build and decorate a restaurant at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, Le Pavillon Bleu.
At this period, the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe ordered a desk and Gustave Serrurier created a model with a music rack.
Although very interested in this event, he was rather critical of the architecture and design of the German Jugendstil and, in contrast, advocated the simple lines and shapes that would increasingly characterise his creations.
He also designed the furniture for the music room of the Château de la Chapelle-en-Serval, decorated by Emile Berchmans and opened a shop in The Hague.
In 1903, Gustave Serrurier and René Dulong undertook the transformation and decoration of the Château de La Cheyrelle, an estate located in the Cantal region.
In 1904, Gustave Serrurier and René Dulong opened a new store in Paris offering not only furniture and decorative objects but also wallpapers, textiles and embroidery.
Gustave Serrurier took part in the 1905 Universal Exhibition in Liège in several sectors (furniture, textiles, lighting, embroidery, ironwork, etc.).
In 1906, Serrurier & Cie offered a wide range of furniture and decorative items in four locations: Liège, Brussels, Paris and Nice.
A prominent exhibit was a bookcase bench in mahogany decorated with stylised flowers in inlaid marquetry and named after Wagner.
Graciela Di Lorio et Jacques-Grégoire Watelet, Villa Ortiz Basualdo, Mar del Plata, Serrurier-Bovy, Éditions du Perron, Liège, 1994.
Jacques-Grégoire Watelet, L’œuvre d’une vie, Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, Architecte et décorateur Liégeois, 1858-1910, Edition du Perron, Liège, 2000.
