Where Connoisseurs Go for French Architectural Salvage

July 10, 2017Samuel Roger, of Origines, sits at an Eero Saarinen Tulip table in his private study in Le Four à Chaux, Richebourg, France. Top: A circa-1640 Louis XIII stone well head is typical of the garden ornaments and architectural antiquities on offer at Origines.

A 45-minute train ride from Paris’s Gare Montparnasse to the small station of Houdan. A 10-minute drive through an unassuming residential stretch, a brief swing around the highway, and you are at Le Four à Chaux, a former tile factory and grain farm that is now home to Origines, France’s primary source for architectural salvage and a treasure trove of antiquities and discoveries. Barns are filled with artfully displayed fireplaces in marble, stone, wood and granite, ranging in date from the 15th through the 20th century, adorned with paneling, vases, sculptures and mirrors and placed on antique terracotta tiles, intricate parquet and oak floorboards. The gardens are filled with fountains, basins, benches, statues and even a 19th-century stone folly shipped over from England.

“This piece is a bit crazy,” says Samuel Roger, the founder and owner of Origines, gesturing at the folly. “But I love finding these kinds of things.”

Roger, who grew up in the area, developed an interest in salvaging architecturally significant antiquities after his father started a building-materials-reclamation business in 1981, just as Roger finished an art history degree in Paris. “His business was more about roof tiles, antique bricks and pavers, wood beams, that kind of thing, but he did get some old fireplaces, which I was immediately interested in,” Roger explains.

In 1992, at 24, he decided to create his own business, specializing in antique fireplaces and flooring, garden ornaments and sculpture. The idea, he says, was to offer “a one-stop shop for renovation if you were looking for this sort of thing.” Today, Origines is a major player in the architectural antiques market and Roger a world authority on French fireplace mantels (he has written a book, Cheminées Françaises, on the topic). “I learned on the job, having hundreds, even thousands of objects pass through my hands,” he says. “It’s the best school.” Among his clients are interior designers Jean-Louis Deniot, Rose Tarlow and Robert Couturier and architect Peter Marino.

After a guided tour of the property and viewing many, many fireplaces (there are more than 200 in stock), Rogers spoke with Introspective about finding his pieces, the problems of transporting several tons of stone and how tastes have changed in recent years.

An array of French stone and marble fireplaces dating from the 16th to the 19th century includes (on the far right) one in the Louis XIV trumeau style with remnants of its original paint.

How do you source your items?

The Internet changed everything. Until then, I spent most of my time driving around France, going to little antiques dealers and reclamation dealers. You had to go in person, because there was no email or cell phone, and you had no idea what you might find. Sometimes, I would get letters with photographs, but you still had to drive all over the country to look at the pieces.

I think we were one of the first individual companies to develop a website, in 1999. People thought that offering our pieces on the web would depreciate the rarity value, but, of course, that turned out not to be true at all. Very quickly, we came to work mostly online. A lot of people email with photographs, and I also look at the auction catalogues and use Google to search for pieces. In the past five years, I’ve found and bought quite a lot of French antique objects from the U.S. Of course, I do go and look at high-value and important pieces in person. I can spot a fake or a period from a photograph, but you don’t ever want to risk investing a significant amount of money without seeing the piece.

Do you buy mostly in France, and do you source specific items for clients?

Over the years, I have bought items from Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany and the U.S., but, yes, France is the main source. That said, one of the greatest fireplaces I ever found was from Vienna. It was a neo-Gothic piece made in 1878 for the grand reception room in the city hall but never installed. Soon, it will be placed in the lobby of a hotel in the Czech Republic.

We will source specific pieces for clients. If someone wants, say, a marble Louis XVI fireplace with ormolu ornaments, we will try to find exactly that. We currently have a potential project with the architect Gabriel Calatrava in New York. If it goes ahead, we will need to source a large quantity of eighteenth-century parquet flooring, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French stone fireplaces and numerous antique garden ornaments. Once, we had a request for a large iron entrance gate to a château, with pillars in stone. We found it!

An iron gate in the style of Louis XIV, framed by a pair of 18th-century stone pillars, forms the entrance to the Four à Chaux site where Origines is located.

Three ca. 1840 columns topped with square capitals are all that remain from an original group of 16 salvaged from a wildlife park in Planckendael, Belgium.

This 19th-century cast-iron vase is densely decorated with ladies’ heads, laurel garlands and handles in the form of interlaced snakes.

Left: This neoclassical fireplace in Carrara marble was sourced from an 1823 building by the English architect Sir Decimus Burton. Right: A life-size French statue of Venus holding an apple dates to the 18th century. To her left is a Louis XVI fireplace flanked by two terracotta female sphinxes straddled by cherubs.

Placed on a 19th-century French draper’s table is a group of statuettes in terracotta and cast iron. The pair to the far left — allegories for winter and autumn — were manufactured by Gossin Frères in Paris ca. 1860.

Renowned French designer Jean-Louis Deniot frequently taps Origines for architectural elements. Here, he has incorporated a ca. 1840 Louis Philippe I fireplace in gray Sainte-Anne marble with legs decorated with acanthus leaves and clawed lion’s feet. Photo by Xavier Béjot

A nearly identical ca. 1840 fireplace — this one in white Carrara marble — which was sourced from the same Parisian hôtel particulier, or townhouse, appears in another of Deniot’s rooms. Photo by Xavier Béjot

Samuel Roger, of Origines, salvaged 18th-century French octagonal limestone tiling specifically for the renovation of this Parisian townhouse. Photo by Pascal Chicaud

An 18th-century Louis XV wall fountain in Carrara marble with gilded-bronze ornaments stands out among a collection of antiques in this Parisian dining room. Photo by Pascal Chicaud

Nineteenth-century French limestone tiling, sourced from Origines and accented with red Languedoc marble inserts, grounds the entryway of a home in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. Photo by Pascal Chicaud

In the New Orleans home of Alden and Emeril Lagasse, designer Tara Shaw incorporated an antique French fireplace with trumeau from Origines. Photo by Peter Vitale

A circa-1860 cast iron bust of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and the spring season, sits with her head crowned in roses and ivy on an octagonal limestone pedestal from the 18th century.

Occasionally, we have great projects that we will work on for several months or years, which is very satisfying. And sometimes, I do have a project in mind when I’m looking at pieces and will take photos to send to the client.

Have you seen changes in tastes or spending habits over the three decades you have spent in this field?

Tastes definitely change. When I started my business, it was all about curved mantels, French Regency, Louis XV. Now, there is a greater interest in simpler lines, like Empire, Directoire and Louis XVI, which perhaps correspond more to interiors by new, younger designers. There is a move toward a more pared-down feel and less liking for more-ornate pieces, which are certainly harder to integrate but often very beautiful in their detail.

As far as spending goes, we are very dependent on external events, because about eighty percent of our clients are foreign — from the U.S., Russia, the Middle East and Europe — although some of them live in France. We saw a significant decline after September 11, and then again after the financial crisis in the U.S. in 2008. We have also had to cope with attacks in France over the past two years, which have certainly deterred foreign customers from visiting. But the Internet — and 1stdibs! — really help, because people don’t absolutely have to come here.

I think being outside of Paris is a deterrent to visitors, and I’ve just acquired a space at the Saint-Ouen flea market, which has the largest concentration of antiques dealers in the world: fourteen hundred in seventeen acres of space. It’s a very charming little three-story house with a courtyard and garden, and we’ll keep a bit of stock there. It will be a way for foreign clients to visit us more easily in Paris, and perhaps for potential clients at the market to find us. It will be a small outpost there and hopefully encourage people to come and see the much greater inventory that we have here. You tell them — it’s easy!

TALKING POINTS

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Cast-iron aquatic grouping, 19th century, by Val D'Osne Foundry

“This cherub sitting on a dolphin is a very elegant and beautifully carved piece from one of the most famous French foundries. Between 1820 and 1890, the foundries were producing cast-iron decorative pieces for both the private market and public spaces like the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and they hired excellent sculptors to create pieces like this.”

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Louis XIV limestone fireplace, 17th century

“This is our most expensive item. It’s a French national treasure and a real piece of heritage and history. It dates to 1652 and comes originally from the Château de Grignan, although it was moved to another château when the original one was destroyed during the French Revolution. It is probably among the three most beautiful and rare mantels that have passed through my hands since I started.”

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Cast-iron group of putti on granite pedestal, 19th century

“This group of putti is a great example of the know-how and skill of the nineteenth-century French foundries and was directly inspired by a famous grouping in the Versailles gardens.”

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Ceremonial stone fountain, 17th century

“I found this fountain at a local auction near its place of origin in amazingly good condition for a piece that has been outside for more than three-hundred years. It comes from a celebrated château and a famous French family whose name, Roquefeuil, can be seen with its coat of arms on the side of the fountain.”

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Pair of French limestone sphinxes, 19th century

“These are monumental pieces and another great example of garden ornamentation from the nineteenth century inspired by fashionable travels to Egypt. The quality and scale are exceptional, and they are both very unusual and in great condition.”

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French Louis XIV limestone fireplace, 17th century

“This is a piece my father found in an old presbytery in Normandy in the late 1980s. He sold it in 1989 to a collector who subsequently died, and the piece remained stored in a barn for twenty-five years. The new owner sent me photographs to see if I was interested, and I immediately recognized it. It retains traces of the colors — red, blue and green — with which it was painted. The colors could be restored, but I like it as it is.”