Museum of art and industry of Saint-Etienne

French museum located on the commune of Saint-Etienne in the department of the the Loire

Presentation

This Musée shelters chiefs of work of industry: beautiful collections of Weapon S and Ribbon manufacture and Cycle S, and this on three stages (more one fourth reserved for the temporary exhibitions). Weaving looms whose trade Jacquard celebrates it are also present in the museum.

By its contents, the museum offers a glance on industries of art and design of the daily newspaper. The museum also opens in the contemporary world, by its museography, on new technologies of information and the communication. It is in a preoccupation of diffusion but also with a conservation, which were carried out the computerization of the inventory and the digitalization of the images of the collections, as well as the large realization campaigns of films on traditional know-how and new technologies. The anchoring of the museum in the history of the city appears by the passage in its center of several visits suggested by “Town of Art and History”. But the museum is with the listening of contemporary reality through the opening on alive industries of the area in the fields of the weapons, the cycle and the textiles.

Collections

An approach concretes history and industrial creation incarnated in the regional inheritance. Through a museography adapted at various levels, one discovers, stage by stage, the collections of weapons, ribbons or cycles. Clear and animated explanations, made interactive by touchscreens, authorize a free visit with personalized courses. The multiple approaches encourage with a transverse reading of the collections and call upon very varied disciplines: letters, visual arts, history, technology, sciences… The mediators are at disposal for the guided visits. Demonstrations of weaving looms are regularly carried out by the hand braid makers.

Weapons

First firearms with the most contemporary hunting weapons, the collection of the museum of Art and Industry recently enriched by the deposit by the Museum by Army, of the weapons of old the Munitions factory of Saint-Etienne, gives an account of the creativity of the arms manufacturers inhabitant of Saint-Etienne but also of the foreign productions. The collection of weapons: most important of France after that of the museum of the Army in Paris.

Mainly centered on the hunting weapon and of trade, the collection of the museum constitutes a reference impossible to circumvent for the specialists. The Middle Ages at the XXe century, it are the direct reflection of the artisanal production and manufacturing inhabitant of Saint-Etienne, while also presenting weapons coming from other foreign factories, Frenchwomen and. Lacollection of weapons of GIAT Industries (Industrial Grouping for the Terrestrial Armament) major element of the inheritance arms manufacturer. The old Munitions factory of Saint-Etienne (FARMHOUSE) carried out a collection which was deposited with the Museum of Art and Industry of the Town of Saint-Etienne in November 2001. The community had strongly begun so that this richness remains on a purely permanent basis in the city where it draws its legitimacy. The unit included/understood approximately 4.358 parts including nearly 3.000 weapons. The Museum of the army preserves approximately 237 weapons (doubled blooms or examples of an private interest which leave the coherence and the richness of its collection) whereas the Museum of Art and Industry has a deposit of 2.341 weapons, placed under its whole responsibility. 350 parts are exposed and 1.991 are in reserve. A regular change of the exposures will allow, according to the sets of themes, to present a maximum of these richnesses.

Textiles

Principal creative center of the ribbon, Saint-Etienne shelters in its museum of Art and Industry the largest collection in the world of ribbons, as well as machines, accessories, tools and furniture representative of this traditional know-how and this original professional environment.

The width of the collections and the bonds with contemporary industrial environments make it possible to recall this filiation between the generations of ribbon, the modernization of the production structures and manufacture of new textiles, as well as the history of decorative arts and the mode. Room of silks. Noble, invaluable and creative, silk works the identity of " those which know the toucher". The ribbon manufacture, little sister of the Lyons silk trade, returns to the Chinese and Eastern tradition. On the European roads of silk, one reads the perenniality of the network of know-how, traditional silk to the new textiles forcing itself in the loan to be carried and the sports. The small-scale models of Vaucanson, collected by the museum at the beginning of the 20th century evoke this imagery and the circulation of know-how, simple reductions on the scale or true masterpieces decorated with glory with the professional blazons.

Cycles

In 1886, the first bicycle French is manufactured in Saint-Etienne, founding document of an industry which will know an international repute grace in particular to the products of Manufrance. Through its collections, the museum gives an account of the historical and technical evolution of this means of transport.

The collection of cycles of the museum of Art and Industry was formed mainly after the second world war, thanks to the gifts of the Employers' federation of the Cycle of Saint-Etienne, the French Manufacture of Weapons and Cycles (Manufrance) and of the acquisitions carried out by German, old Maurice preserving of the museum, in order to create a national museum of the cycle, ratifying successes inhabitant of Saint-Etienne of this industry. The museum thus presents the specimens of manufacture of Saint-Etienne which made its fame: Panel, Vélocio, Cycles Draper, Ravat, Automoto, Manufrance…

The parts headlights of the collection: The ancestors of the cycle are present through specimens of great value and sometimes very rare: The " heap of ferraille" of Vélocio, the draisienne, the monocycle of Brescia fine 18th century, the vélocipède Michaux 1867, the vélocipède Michaux 1869 (only model of the type known with a rubber binding), the machine to run Valère 1897, the monocycle Draper, the bichaîne of Vélocio, the bicycle of the Gauthier brothers, prototypes with double pédalage of CLOAREC, and soon a bicycle of Jeannie Longo.

External bonds

Museum of Art and Industry

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