Oak, walnut, ash, elm, holly, plane, chestnut, cherry, pear and beech provide the soft tones and the enveloping range of grays; they serve Majorelle in calm and deliberately monochrome compositions.

At the apogee of the Belle époque, during the 1900 Paris World's Fair (Exposition Universelle), Majorelle's designs triumphed and drew him an international clientele.

The École de Nancy, however, was often in short supply of funding, and the formal artistic cooperation among its members slowly seemed to disintegrate during the First World War.

Majorelle, like many industrialists in Nancy, located his house across the street from his factory, but in a relatively new area of town; the large parcel of land which it occupied made it seem like a veritable country estate.

Sauvage and Weissenburger's three-story design for the villa represents the true flowering of Art Nouveau architecture in Nancy, with multiple bow windows and floral motifs covering the exterior.

Majorelle located his own personal studio on the third floor under a gabled roof, and included a huge arched window combled together with spandrels that evoke the branches of a tree or flower.

The conflagration, no doubt spurred on by the fresh supply of lumber, unfinished furniture, and sawdust, burned virtually all the firm's sketches, awards, molds, equipment, and archives that documented the fifty-year history of the enterprise.

After the war, he reopened the factory and his shop, and continued to collaborate with the Daum glassworks and produce furniture, though these late designs show the stiffened geometry of Art Deco.

After his death, his family, whose fortunes had been damaged severely by the war, could no longer afford to live in the Villa Majorelle, and the house and much of the outlying property were sold off in parcels.

Eventually, the villa went through several architectural modifications (aside from those Majorelle himself made while he resided there), including the addition of a concrete bunker near the rear and the enclosure of the front terrasse.

Majorelle's work, particularly the Aux Orchidées mahogany and amourette desk with gilt-bronze mounts from the Musée d'Orsay, is featured prominently in the 2008 French Film L'heure d'été, released in the US as Summer Hours in 2009.