VALLIN, Eugène

French architect and cabinetmaker. He learnt his trade in the carpentry business belonging to his uncle Charles-Auguste Claudel (1827-1893), a specialist in church furniture in Nancy. Although he only spent a year at the municipal drawing school, through his uncle he discovered Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s famous Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1854-68). He had been managing the business for six years when in 1887, he completed work on the great organ of the church of St Léon at Nancy, where their passion for neo-medievalism made the sculptor voluble and the carpenter bold. At the Exposition des Art Décoratifs in Paris in 1894, he was still exhibiting Gothic-style furniture. However, the enthusiastic proselytizing of Emile Gallé and Victor Prouvé converted a developing love of Gothic into an engagement with Modernism. His view was that the only adornment a piece of furniture needed was the harmonious interplay of its formal components.

In 1896 Vallin had designed a house for his own use - the first in the École de Nancy manner. In 1902, he collaborated with architect Georges Biet (1869-1955) on an Art Nouveau house for Biet; its lively street façade boasts an open loggia, a porch and a high gallery. In his architectural capacity, he pioneered the use of reinforced concrete.

The Musée de l’École de Nancy houses several pieces of furniture and a furnished dining room (1904) that illustrate the nature of Vallin’s work, and there is also an astonishing multi-functional bookcase (1902) decorated with a sculpture by his son Auguste Vallin (1881-1967).