Masterworks of French Cookery
Last week we took the call from a designer who’s building a Florida house styled after a turn of the century French mansion. The reference photo for the kitchen equipment comes from this photo of a 1912 Fourneau Baudon island range currently housed at the Nissim de Camondo Museum in Paris.
Now aside from the fact that this era and style is one of our greatest passions, our first reaction was sheer wonder at the beauty of the engineering and construction of this range. We pride ourselves on knowing as much as anybody does about the history and aesthetic of French ranges, but this was one we hadn’t seen before. When we looked more carefully at the picture, though, a few things began to stick out.
This mansion, built for the Comte Moïse de Camondo by architect Réne Sergent, was itself built down to the details after an earlier mansion—Marie Antoinette’s palace in Versailles, the Petit Trianon. Almost the entire design for the Camondo building could have come straight from the 1780’s, with the exception of this piece of cooking equipment. Obviously the client was passionate enough about his kitchen, and apparently passionate enough about this particular range, to break the continuity of the rest of his design to fit this modern construction into it.
We can see why. This is one of those masterpieces that Bonnet famously called “the chef’s pianos”. The heft of the doors, the solidness of it all, and the attention to detail are breathtaking even in photos.
The Cubain family who built this took a lot of pride in it, and it shows. Stamped onto the doors in six inch high letters are the bold words “ENGINEERING” - “CONSTRUCTION”. And then there are the nameplates—one each front and back, and monogram plates on each end. Down to the details on the oven door latches, everything is perfect.
This tradition of master artisanship is what continues to set French ranges apart from any other cooking equipment being built. The top family foundries — Molteni, La Cornue, Diva, Delabrauc, and maybe a few others — continue building “pianos for chefs” the same way they were done a century ago, and their constructions are expected to last another century, if not more. The heft and the longevity are just awe-inspiring.
Back to business… if this client goes forward with this project and commissions us to recreate this masterpiece… Wow. What an opportunity. This is industrial art like nothing else.
More detail photos of this range:
Photos by Thomas Claveirole, used under a Creative Commons license
| Comments: 
10.17.08 at 9:29 am
Intersting stuff. How do you integrate it with countertops?