Rene’ Paul Chambellan Works
Judging by my offerings on Etsy, you can see that I have a certain fondness for the architectural sculptor who would be 132 years old if alive today. He does have descendants and we have been in touch. More on that in a bit.
RPC was schooled both at NYU and in Paris at the Beaux-Arts Institute of design around the time of World War I and went on to create some of the most enduring and iconic works of the art-deco period.
Fortunately for us, he was commissioned by the builder, Irwin Chanin who recently visited the Paris Expo for Decorative Arts just before designing his iconic Chanin Building in midtown Manhattan, NYC.
Chanin had his mind set on a theme, ‘City of Opportunity’ and Chambellan was chosen by the architects, Sloan and Robertson to create the bas-reliefs found everywhere in and on the building. This also included a series of brass gates which can be found underneath the recessed mountings of the reliefs.
I will do an in-depth post on the Chanin building since it has so many of the great work of Chambellan that deserves focus.
The ‘Descendant’
While minding my own business and making to order what buyers picked out from my Etsy shop, I noticed a message from a buyer who wanted the 4 plaque Chambellan set. He said he was the ‘Maternal Grandson of Rene’ Paul’ and that he was excited to learn that someone was reviving his grandfather’s legacy. Well, I too was blown away having met this individual and what occurred next was beyond my expectations.
The Sketchbook
The grandson, going by ‘Tony’ or Anthony, said that his family had preserved a sketchbook dating back to the 1920’s, updated until the time of his death in 1961, containing many drawings and pictures of work both finished and unrealized. He was willing to share this with me in the form of Google Drive images which we went over in detail numerous times.
We had a back and forth discussion about the possibility of our creating a new plaque from an unrealized drawing from the sketchbook. We chose this:
And here is the resulting plaque:
I felt privileged to get the opportunity to create for the first time a new plaque from the sketchbook of one of my favorite architectural sculptors.
Well, it didn’t stop there and I would like to share what happened next but that will have to go into the next post.
