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The Werkhuizen /Maison Franck company in Antwerp had three activities:
1) Furniture production
2) Interior decoration
3) Antiques business
The first Werkhuizen/Maison Franck business ran by Mr and Mrs Franck, was located in the Kuipersstraat in Antwerp and expanded from a modest wallpaper shop to a flourishing decorator’s enterprise.
Their son Frans Franck (1872-1932), a talented draughtsman, was sent to Paris as an apprentice of an (unknown) ébéniste. This training maid him sensible to the new currents in English decorative arts and the work of the famous artist, writer and designer William Morris (1834-1896); the writer, poet, critic and painter John Ruskin (1819-1900); the artist and book illustrator Walter Crane (1845-1915). Back in Belgium, father Franck involved Frans and his brother Charles (1870-1935) in the decoration of the halls for Antwerp’s Second World Exhibition in 1894 with a large number of vellum sheets. They accomplished this assignment with great accuracy and speed, reason enough for their father to leave the management of the Werkhuizen/Maison Franck company in their hands: Charles was put in charge of management and administration, Frans of the decorative side of the business. The company flourished and during the Interbellum she employed circa 150 craftsman such as upholsterers, gilders, painters, sculptors and various specialists.
But both brothers also became very important cultural promoters of the Antwerp art scene at the start of the 20th century. They wanted to attract new artistic currents to Antwerp and founded The Chapel which quickly evolved into the new artistic society Kunst van Heden – Art Contemporain. They promoted young artists such as the modernist and pre-expressionist sculptor and painter Rik Wouters (1882-1916); the expressionist sculptor and painter Constant Permeke (1886-1952); the major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth James Ensor (1860-1949); and the avant-garde painter Floris Jespers (1889-1965) with his mix of styles (Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism) and his brother Oscar Jespers (1887-1970), an important modernist sculptor. Kunst van Heden invited many members of the international art scene, for example Chagall, Van Gogh, Klee and Kandinsky. Frans was an art collector himself and being the first and enthusiast promoter of Ensor, he had work of him in his private collection. In contrast to his artistic commitment, Frans Franck’s international and avant-garde taste was never modernist. He didn’t design abstract forms, he didn’t use contrasting colours and had no interest in mass production of cheep furniture. Frans died in 1932 after an unfortunate fall while he was taking a family photograph at the Belgian coast.
Franck’s son Francis and his business associate Paul Pieters came in charge of the company on 1 June 1932. Under Francis’ charismatic and creative management the Franck business continued to flourish. In 1962, two years before his death, Werkhuizen/Maison Franck had ceased to exist, but Maison Décor, a new and smaller company had been set up by one of Francis assistants, Frans Lemmens. He continued to furnish interiors in the Maison Franck tradition.
The Werkhuizen/Maison Franck’s furniture trademark was without any doubt tortoiseshell. The use of tortoiseshell veneer for furniture in Antwerp went back to the first half of the 17th century. Antwerp was already known as the production and export centre of tortoise-veneered cabinets. Since Frans Franck was also an antiques dealer, buying and selling Antwerp cabinets of the city’s Golden Age must have inspired his 20th century designs using the tortoiseshell veneer techniques and some stylistic features. The effect of red tortoiseshell was obtained by fixing the transparent tortoiseshell veneers onto a painted red background with glue that was coloured with vermilion powder. Yellow tortoiseshell was obtained by gluing the transparent veneers onto a gold leaf background. Each model was produced in a limited edition of twelve pieces: six pieces in yellow tortoiseshell and six pieces in red tortoiseshell and the model was registered Sans Garantie Du Gouvernement (S.G.D.G.) which means ‘patented without state guarantee. In common with Art Deco designs, inspiration was also found in French or English classicist furniture. The book by G.M. Ellwood with English 18th century designs – such as models by Thomas Sheraton - that Franck owned must also have been a source of inspiration: it shows some drawings of Sheraton-furniture legs decorated with carved tassels (floches) and a demi-lune side table on square tapering legs completely veneered in tortoiseshell. The creative Franck made this floche motif and tortoiseshell technique characteristic for his designs. Every floche was carved and chiselled separately by hand. In combination with tortoiseshell this kind of Franck furniture was very expensive without being really profitable, but it became his trademark. An other typical Franck feature was the use of Chinese lacquerer panels, for example for cabinet doors. Thanks to their brother Louis Franck - a Belgian Minister of State – who had good contacts with the colonies and China, Franck imported - at first old - Coromandel lacquer panels. When the demand for lacquerer increased, new ones were made locally. The Franck tortoiseshell Art Deco furniture is usually quite different from the pieces he made in the international Art Deco style: Franck travelled frequently to Paris and he owned Croquis de Ruhlmann, the book with sketches by the famous Parisian furniture and interior designer Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann (1879-1933). Besides the luxury tortoiseshell and lacquerer furniture, Franck designed and produced a considerable variety of chairs, tables, cabinets, etc. in oak and walnut in an eclectic historicizing style combining for example 17th and 18th century design elements. Sometimes the historicist designs remained close to the original style, but they were provided with a new function. For example a neo-classical cabinet that originally had drawers and a sliding top inspired Franck for a liquor cabinet. Franck adapted constantly his designs instead of sticking to a limited number of standard models. Custom-designed creations were the rule at a time when ideas of mass production and standardisation were taking hold.
Werkhuizen/Maison Franck wasn’t only involved in furnishing a house, it also acted as an interior designer company with Frans’ own creations or with pieces sold in their antiques business. The interior decoration business was comprehensive and was involved in every detail of a project : carpentry, stairs, windows, doors, flooring, lighting, wallpaper, curtains, upholstery, etcetera.
When the company that had taken over Werkhuizen/Maison Franck in 1965 was liquidated, the remains of the Maison Franck archives were sold in 1998 through the Antwerp auction house Amberes. These archives contained furniture construction drawings from ca. 1910 to 1950; a set of watercolour furniture and interior drawings; a register of the different tortoiseshell table designs from 1920 to 1935; an (incomplete) ledger of 14 books with sales records of general antiques, furniture and objects between 1900 and 1961.
Coffee table top with rounded, slightly protruding corners. Four tapered legs with gilded acanthus leafs at the bottom, interconnected curved stretchers with a circular motif in the center.
1920s-1930s
Burr walnut
Not numbered
H. 50 cm, W. 80 cm, D. 52 cm
Sources: Müllendorf, E. (2002), ‘The furniture and interior design of Maison Franck of Antwerp (1900-1962) in Furniture History The Journal of The Furniture History Society, (no 38), p. 150-165; Exhibition catalogue Art Deco Belgique 1920-1940, Musée Ixelles 06.10 - 18.12.1988, p. 186-188.
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