Marbriers de Paris: the popular market for funerary monuments in nineteenth-century Paris

ABSTRACT

Since the nineteenth century significant attention has been given to the role of architects and sculptors in the modern cemeteries of Paris. This is particularly true of places such as Père-Lachaise where their role in the commemoration of noteworthy individuals has driven tourism as well as scholarship, past and present. Yet the tombs that architects designed were by far the exception to the rule. As the demand for funerary monuments grew in the wake of the 1804 burial reforms, the need for a commercial market for affordable tomb structures supervened. The result of this new demand for grave markers that could appeal to all levels of society was the emergence of a specialized funerary monuments trade. Regulatory changes, popular print media, and architectural discourses of the period all indicate that the rising demand for monuments not only fueled the growth of a popular market, but also led to the stigmatization of marbriers as opportunistic and greedy. Likewise the marbriers’ clients were derided as vain consumers of cheap ‘knock-offs’ that substituted luxuries otherwise inaccessible and inappropriate to their social standing. The present study utilizes a database constructed from the commercial almanacs of Paris (1798–1907) in order to track the development of the marbrerie (stonework) and examine the low end of the funerary monuments market. Although past methods of approaching the cemetery in nineteenth-century Paris, have greatly underestimated the role of marbriers, this article argues for the reconsideration of funerary monuments through the lens of the popular market.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual culture
• paris
• nineteenth century
• funerary monuments
• stonecutters
• emerging markets

Acknowledgements

Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author. This article has been adapted from a chapter of the author’s doctoral dissertation, supervised by Neil McWilliam. The author wishes to thank him, as well as her colleagues in the Duke Art, Law and Markets Initiative (DALMI)—namely Fiene Leunissen, Hans J. van Miegroet, Felipe Álvarez de Toledo, and Anne-Sophie Radermecker—for their support and input during the development of this project and writing of this article. The author is also grateful to the participants in the 2019 Artl@s seminar in Paris as well as the audience of the 2019 AHNCA-Dahesh Symposium for their thoughtful feedback during presentations on an early presentation of this work. Comments by an anonymous reviewer also helped to improve an earlier version of this text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request. URL for data: https://kayleealexander.com/marbriers/

Notes

1. The translation ‘stonecutter’ was based on Nugent’s French-English dictionary published in 1796, which translated marbrier as ‘one who saws and polishes marble; stone cutter.’ This translation is somewhat insufficient as it implies that cutting stone was the marbriers’ only task. For this reason, the author has chosen to use the original French throughout to refer, as it did in the nineteenth century, to owners and employees of marbrerie enterprises.

2. Past studies of funerary monuments in this period have typically relied on examinations of monuments that remain in situ, or those that have been heavily documented as a result of having been executed by a named architect. Such studies have largely ignored more temporary structures, and especially those for which no architect was involved in the production process. This has largely resulted in the availability heuristic, a phenomenon wherein judgements are made according to the most recent information available. In the case of the nineteenth-century Parisian cemetery, as studied by scholars such as Philippe Ariès, Thomas Kselman and others, the present-day availability of more elite monuments – erected largely over perpetual concessions – has led to the assumption that these constructions also played a significantly larger role historically at sites such as Père-Lachaise.

3. In addition to Ariès and Kselman, see, for example: Ragon (1983); Etlin (1984); Le Normand-Roman (1995); Pantano (1997); Glover Lindsay (2012); Bertrand and Groud (2016); and Legacey (2016).

4. The term ‘marbrier’ was used interchangeably throughout the nineteenth century to refer both to those who owned and operated marbreries, as well as to employees of those businesses who engaged in the production process. There is no reason to assume that the owners of these businesses, be they male or female (marbrière), did not also engage in some of the manual labor required of their enterprises.

5. Title I of 23 prairial year XII stipulated that all burials take place in separate plots and be separated from each other by at least 30 centimeters on all sides. These spatial regulations applied to both concessions (paid burials) and free burials.

6. While 23 Prairial introduced the idea of burial concessions, it did not distinguish between perpetual and temporary arrangements. In 1805, Nicolas Frochot issued an order for the differentiation between these two types of concessions in Père-Lachaise; this set the precedent for all French cemeteries.

7. Records of any specialization first appears in the almanacs in 1802 (‘pendules en marbre’); the first mention of specialization in funerary goods occurs in 1820, when ‘monumens sépulcraux’ is mentioned in the record for Schwind, a marbrier whose address is listed as ‘au Père Lachaise.’

8. This includes both those whose almanac description mentioned funerary constructions as one among a number of specializations as well as those whose description only mentioned tombs. Specializations mentioned were not always consistent across all years, but this number reflects whether or not a given marbrier was associated with a given specialization during any of the years they were known to be active at a given address.

9. The publication of the annual almanacs was originally undertaken by two different publishers (Bottin and Firmin Didot), who eventually merged in 1857. Every year, in addition to the information that had already collected, corrections and additions were solicited from the public. While it was free to be listed in the almanac, one who wanted details included with their record was required to contact the editor directly (there is no mention of what this might have cost).

10. Initially there was one category for marbriers in the commercial almanacs. From 1884 onward, an additional category – ’Monuments Funèbres’ – appeared in the almanac, although many of the businesses in this new industry continued be also included under the general category of marbriers.

11. In the nineteenth century these additional funerary decorations did not include funerary monuments, although today funerary marbreries and pompes funèbres are often one in the same, offering vertically integrated funerary services. The pompes funèbres monopoly was dissolved in France in 1998.

12. In the original French this would have transformed the text from ‘épouse adorée par un époux inconsolable’ [wife adored by an inconsolable husband] to, simply, ‘épouse adorée’ [beloved wife].

13. According to a data set compiled by Robert C. Allen at UC Davis, the daily wage for an artisan in the first quarter of the nineteenth century would have been just under sixteen grams of silver, amounting to less than 1300 francs per year.

14. Entry no. 1698 (18 May 1814) in Daily burial records (registres journaliers d’inhumation) for Père-Lachaise Cemetery [29 October 1813 to 4 June 1814], Pompes funèbres et cimetières, Archives de Paris, Paris, France, accessed 9 September 2019, http://archives.paris.fr/r/216/cimetieres/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Graduate School, Duke University [James B. Duke International Research Fellowship]; John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University [PhD Lab Fellowship in Digital Knowledge].