Jasper Morrison tells us that after noticing a chair with a missing seat in an antique shop, he had the idea of using purely structural elements to make an armchair. For this model, the designer used steel tubing, which had already been used in the modernist chairs of the 1920s and 1930s for its technical properties as a resistant and modular material...

This wine fountain entered the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Bordeaux in 1959. It was Xavier Védère, former curator of the museum, who bought this piece from an antique dealer in Rue des Remparts in Bordeaux. Because of its fantasy, its style and the theme it deals with, it was immediately considered to be an original piece of 18th century Bordeaux production...

The Duchess of Berry owned an album of drawings depicting Italian landscapes, some of which are signed Prosper-François-Irénée Barrigue dit de Fontainieu, which she kept in the library of the Château de Rosny, as evidenced by the bookplate affixed to the second flyleaf of this work...

In 1827, the Duke of Bordeaux and his sister Louise d'Artois, the grandchildren of Charles X, received for their Christmas presents a magnificent piece of furniture commissioned by the King's Chamber from Alphonse Giroux, founder of a shop selling curiosities and small furniture in the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré in Paris. Of a prestigious workmanship, this piece of furniture in lemon tree reveals its secrets throughout the month of May...

Made at the end of the 18th century in Beautiran, where the Bordeaux printed canvas factory was located, this madder-coloured fabric, which gives its name to the play, is entitled "L'art d'aimer" or "L'agréable leçon" (The Art of Loving), after the captions written on the scenes...

This spice box from the first half of the 18th century is the work of the Bordeaux factory founded by Jacques Hustin. It is a tin-glazed earthenware with a grand feu decoration, i.e. a ceramic covered with a tin oxide glaze on which the decoration is applied. The whole thing is fired in one go at high temperature. The tin glaze is thick and waterproof and is particularly suitable for preserving spices...

As part of an educational programme aimed at renewing teaching materials in nursery and primary schools, the company has developed a set of books and games designed to help awaken the sensibilities of young children. In publishing these games, Danese was bold: in those years, the project of transmitting aesthetic education through games and, as a corollary, affirming that the play function is essential in the perception and enjoyment of art, were completely new ideas...

The famous American firm Nike shares an industrial model with some of its colleagues that allows it to combine mass production with the - permanent - edition of limited series. The latter are characterised by original shapes, prints and patterns and are collected by connoisseurs the world over...

Echoing the exhibition "Verres d'usage et d'apparat de la Renaissance au XIXème siècle, la collection du Mesnil" (13 December 2013 - 30 March 2014), the museum is highlighting this month a speckled glass flask whose attribution has raised many questions...

The young harvester and the young grape-picker, garden statues in the museum's collection, could represent Lise and Colas, two characters from Dauberval's ballet La Fille mal gardée. In the second half of the 18th century, provincial life was seen in a new light: in philosophy, in the theatre or in the everyday setting, simplicity became a virtue...