Edgar Brandt
Edgar William Brandt was a French ironworker and prolific weapons designer. In 1901 he set up a small workshop at 76 rue Michel-Ange in the 16th arrondissement in Paris, where he began designing, silversmithing, and forging small items such as jewelry, crosses, and brooches. His business began to take off with special commissions such as the door of the French Embassy in Brussels, the Escalier Mollien stairs in the Louvre, and the stair and balcony railing for the Grand Theatre Municipal de Nancy.
At the start of World War I in 1914 Brandt was called to serve. Observing a need for mortars in trench warfare, he designed an aerodynamic mortar shell with obturation grooves which has not substantially changed since, and made a successful armaments business from his invention after the war. His 60 mm, 81 mm and 120 mm mortars were very widely copied before, throughout and subsequent to World War II. He also invented armour-piercing discarding sabot artillery shells and contributed substantially to the development of effective HEAT-warhead weapons for infantry anti-tank use through his development of HEAT rifle grenades.
Following the WWI Brandt embarked on his most productive years as a designer, starting to show his work in the Salon d’Automne every year. In 1919 he decided to expand his business, engaging architect Favier and constructing a new building on the corner of the Boulevard Murat and the rue Erlanger. In it he maintained a physical catalogue of his ironwork. He also added nearly 150 people employees, each with specialized tasks ranging from concept to production.
Brandt's career began to peak in the 1920s. Stylish entrances for shops in Paris and lighting were an important part of his production. Additionally, with the rise of radiators in homes, rather than concealing them, he drew attention their way with elegantly designed covers. Throughout the rest of his career his work spanned from iron gates and fireplace grills to and console tables.
Brandt's work was acknowledged by the American Association of Architects making him an honorary member in 1929.
As Brandt is now more known internationally, he expanded his business again and opened a state-of-the-art factory in the Paris suburb of Chatillon-sous-Bagneux, where upward of 3,000 workers fabricated both decorative metalwork and armaments under his name. His company was nationalized in 1936. Several years later World War II forced him to flee with his family to Switzerland. At war's end in 1945 Brandt returned to France but chose not to reopen his studio. Instead, he worked on small projects until he died in 1960.
Today, the Brandt company lives on through several mergers as FagorBrandt, a manufacturer of household appliances.
Early life
Edgar Brandt was born on Christmas Eve of 1880 in Paris, France. Brandt is the first of two children by Betsy Emma Bas and Charles Haag Brandt. Both Brandt and his younger brother “grew up in a protected and affection-filled atmosphere, and were strongly influenced by both their mother's work habits and their father's methods of analyzing and facing problems”. At the young age of thirteen, Brandt was accepted into a prestigious boarding school at the Ecole Nationale Professionnelle de Vierzon, a technical school located approximately seventy miles outside of Paris. Given that the instructors were responsible for developing "skilled workers and industrial designers, factory supervisors, and foremen," the curriculum was oriented more towards a trade school than an art school. The school was divided into two workshops, ironwork and woodworking. Brandt was placed into the ironwork atelier where he first learned traditional forging techniques. Brandt excelled in the workshop and “by age fifteen, he was the most accomplished ironsmith in the school”. Edgar graduated from the Ecole Nationale Professionnelle de Vierzon in 1898 and after graduation served two years in the army. Shortly after his army obligation, Brandt opened his own small and modest atelier where he began his career in metalwork by designing small scale items such as rings, crosses, pendants, and brooches. Some scholars have said that “Brandt's small-scale pieces, marked by accuracy and precision, were a starting point for a design-and-process formula that would slowly lead him to large-scale works in iron that were also meticulously crafted”.Early career
At the start of Brandt's profession, the Art Nouveau movement was at its peak; and after looking at the work of Louis Majorelle, a French furniture designer during the Art Nouveau movement, Brandt began to start his endeavor in the furniture making process. Due to the design movement of the time, Brandt's furniture pieces used a combination of woodwork and ironwork; the whole piece would be constructed of wood with accents of ornament in metal such as iron, steel, or bronze. In 1903, Brandt made his debut in the fine and applied arts society by exhibiting his work in the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs. Over the next couple of years, Brandt's work was being reviewed more seriously by the decorative-arts critics. As a result, Brandt began to get commissions to work on larger scale projects. The start of his career in large-scale works begin with the grand staircase for the Hotel de Ville in Euville. After getting a taste for larger works, “his early success with forged jewelry and small-scale pieces allowed Edgar to expand his workshop capacities, investing in a larger plant that enabled him to take on larger-scale projects and to hire more workmen”. Eventually, architectural commissions started to take precedence over smaller-scale works.Art Deco period
The Art Deco movement, also called the style moderne in France, began in Europe around 1910 but it wasn't until the 1920s when Art Deco reached its peak. This design movement can be characterized by the rise of modernity and the qualities found within machine-made objects. However, when specifically looking at France, where Edgar Brandt began his career, the Art Deco period can be characterized “by its embrace of its national past as the intellectual point of departure for creating something new. While designers elsewhere often rejected earlier aesthetics, materials, and manufacturing techniques, French designers sought innovation by embracing history”. Art Deco was created as a reaction against the Art Nouveau movement. Designers’ works during the Art Nouveau movement were criticized for creating art-for-arts sake; they were more interested in aesthetics than with function, materials, and techniques. Additionally, the rise of the industrial revolution spurred the Art Deco movement as handcraftsmanship was starting to be replaced by machine production. Therefore, the “poor-quality mass production of Art Nouveau objects hastened the demise of this wonderfully original style after 1900”. As a result, the metal industry was being dominated by cast iron which was mass produced inexpensively and efficiently. Unfortunately, this also meant that it was limited in what it could do both technically and artistically. Due to this reason, a renewed interest in craftsmanship and design began in France. After the war, “designers felt a sense of urgency to reestablish France as the international leader in luxury trades, both as a matter of national pride and for their important contribution to the French economy”.Method
With the rise of the industrial revolution, machine production was replacing handcraftsmanship. Therefore, the metal industry was dominated by cast iron, which was mass produced inexpensively and efficiently which meant that it was also limited both technically and artistically. With this in mind, Brandt realized early on in his career that artist and manufacturers were operating from two different perspectives. From the eyes of artists, manufacturers were more interested in the number of sales rather than the process or the technique. Therefore, manufacturers would choose the pieces that were the easiest to produce or the ones that had the most commercial potential. On the other hand, from the eyes of manufacturers, artist created pieces that were too complex and difficult to reproduce. Consequently, it was Brandt's task to align art and industry to make well-realized designs but not at the cost of reproduction. Brandt once said, “the artist must utilize the means that science has placed at his disposal; to preserve or hold on to the old methods is an absurdity”. Thus, instead of continuing with mass production that was commonly used at the time, he implemented the idea of serial production in his workshop. Ultimately, this means that Brandt used machines to simplify the preparation and parts and their assembly but would then go in and add his own handwork and hand finishing to the pieces to add his own personal touch to each of the elements.Shift in technology
Brandt was always familiar with the changing nature of technology and design. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that when the metal industry introduced new methods of welding, Brandt familiarized himself with the technique and implemented it into his work. In 1903 French engineers designed the oxyacetylene welding torch. This torch allowed ironworkers to join two pieces of metal quickly. The torch could heat up small areas of metal which would then allow the metal to become its own joining material that would eliminate traditional joining methods such as collaring or riveting. Shortly after its release, Brandt was able to master this new technique and became one of the earliest champions of the welding gun. As a result of his mastery of the oxyacetylene welding torch and other forging methods, Brandt was able to develop his own personal style.In 1908, Brandt put this new method of welding to the test when he designed an Art Nouveau wrought-iron stair rail for M. Bardedienne. In the stairway banister, Brandt created individual pieces that were then all welded together to create an overall composition. Many of Brandt's colleagues remained averse to the idea of this new technology; they felt “the only worthwhile ironwork was that done by a single artisan using the ancient methods”. However, this new technique allowed Brandt to have great success due to the fact that many of his designs could not be produced if it were not for this new method of welding.