Alexander Clavel
Alexander Clavel, also recorded as Alexander Clavel-Oswald and Alexander Clavel-Linder in 19th-century Basel sources, was a French-born Swiss textile industrialist and silk dyer who, in 1859, began producing the synthetic dye fuchsine in Basel. In 1873 he sold his works to Bindschedler & Busch, the predecessor of the Gesellschaft für Chemische Industrie in Basel . His early adoption of synthetic dyes and his move to the Basel-Klybeck district were pivotal in Basel's emergence as a European center of the dye and chemical industries.
Early life and family
Clavel was born in Lyon in 1805 and trained as a silk dyer.Career
He settled in Basel in 1838 and married Henriette Linder, widow of silk dyer Karl Theodor Oswald, taking over the Oswald dye works at the Bläsihof in Kleinbasel. Through business and family links with Lyon dyers, he followed developments in coal-tar dye chemistry emerging from France and Britain.In 1859, Clavel began manufacturing fuchsine for the silk ribbon trade in Basel, one of the earliest such ventures in Switzerland.
Fuchsine belongs to the triarylmethane class; in 19th-century trade literature it was often called aniline red, but that term was used loosely for related red aniline dyes and is not chemically precise. Modern historical reviews distinguish fuchsine/magenta from looser uses of aniline red.
Complaints about fumes from arsenic-based processes led Basel authorities to restrict aniline-red production; in 1864 Clavel moved the works to the Klybeckstrasse on the Rhine, creating a "Laboratorium für Fabrikation von Anilin- und anderen Farben" . The move marked a shift of colour chemistry to Basel's outskirts and foreshadowed the city's industrial expansion.
In 1873, weeks before his death, his dye plant was sold to the chemist Robert Bindschedler and the businessman Albert Busch, whose partnership was reorganized in 1884 as the Gesellschaft für Chemische Industrie in Basel.
Personal life
Clavel became a naturalized citizen of Basel in 1849. He and his wife Henriette Linder had one son, Alexander Clavel-Merian, who continued the family business; the later industrialists Alexander Clavel-Respinger and René Clavel were his grandsons.Death and legacy
Clavel died in Basel on 22 February 1873.Clavel's enterprise established the lineage that grew into Ciba-Geigy and later Novartis. Basel's chemical-industrial surge was driven by such early dye makers and the relocation to Klybeck.