Georges Lenepveu

Georges Anthème Lenepveu , born with Bayeux the December 19th 1857 and died in Paris the November 22nd 1923, is a Norman Master-glassmaker . He is regarded as the inventor of the Boule to snow, which he would have presented to the World Fair of Paris in 1878.

Biography

Georges Anthème Lenepveu is born in the family home from Bayeux the December 19th 1857. His/her father, Joseph Henri Lenepveu, are book-keeper in a notary of the city. One knows on the other hand few things about his mother, died in layers two years after the birth of Georges.

At the end of an apparently calm schooling, Georges finds apprentice then employed in a Master-glassmaker of the area of the Bessin. For this reason, it carries out as less noble tasks and is occasionally made deliveryman, boy of races, etc According to the family legend, it is by delivering a service of glasses in a hotel of Bayeux as it meets at 20 years the young person Natalia Fedorovna Korkov, a Lithuanian Russian speaker of passage in Normandy, with which it falls passionately in love. " It is very pretty, Normandy, but the snow of my country me manque" , one day the young girl acknowledges to him. Thus, to make fall snow on the capital from the Bessin, Georges Lenepveu imagines and develops what will become the Boule with snow: a sphere of glass, containing a decoration bathing in water among white flakes which fall gracefully when the object is turned over. Its first known prototype represents the cathedral of Bayeux.

Natalia leaves soon the area, but the owner of Georges, impressed by the creativity of the young man, decides to present his invention to the World Fair of Paris which will take place later one year, in 1878. On the spot, the two men make confidence with the industrialists naively that they meet, whereas they did not take any legal tendency to protect the invention… The Boule with snow will thrive soon, primarily in Europe and with the the United States, but Georges Lenepveu will never perceive the fruits of this business success!

Land-mark and disillusioned, it will found a few years later its own glassmaking in the Bessin, but its bad management and a precarious health will make péricliter quickly the business. He will then undertake a voyage towards the Russia (or the Lithuania) with an aim, according to his entourage, to find Natalia (in vain).

One loses then his trace during several years, until his marriage with Julia Havard, the October 19th 1888. It was then established with Paris, where it will die of the continuations of a Congestion of the lungs, at the 66 years age.

Georges and Julia Lenepveu had five children, of which two reached the adulthood.

Commemoration

In December 2007, the Association Georges-Anthème Lenepveu will publish a book for its rehabilitation.

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