What master glassmaker means. Francis Chigot (1879-1960)
by François Landries and Martine Tandeau de Marsac
My Limousin, 348 p., €30
Son of a house painter, Francis Chigot discovered stained glass at the National School of Decorative Arts in Limoges. In 1907, he created a specialized workshop by calling on cartonniers. The entrepreneur surfs on industrial glasses and art nouveau aesthetics. Then he switched to art deco in 1925 at the Universal Exhibition in Paris where he won a Grand Prix with the painter Pierre Parot. A fervent Catholic, he participated in the revival of sacred art; his workshop carried out more than 500 orders for civil and religious stained glass windows, as far away as Quebec and Virginia. At the same time, the Limoges Fine Arts Museum is exhibiting A World of Lights, by Francis Chigot (until March 12), before the Cité du stained glass window in Troyes.
