A marchand-mercier is a French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 term for a type of entrepreneur working outside the guild

Guild

A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...

 system of craftsmen but carefully constrained by the regulations of a corporation under rules codified in 1613.. The reduplicative term literally means a merchant of merchandise, but in the 18th century took the connotation of a merchant of objets d'art. Earliest references to this Corps de la Ville de Paris can be found at the close of the 16th century, but in the 18th century marchands-merciers were shopkeepers but they also played an important role in the decoration of Paris homes. In fact, they served as general contractors, designing and commissioning pieces of the most fashionable furniture, and often, in addition, worked outside of their shops as interior decorators, responsible for many aspects of a room's decor. In Paris, the guild system, in place since the late Middle Ages, prohibited craftsmen from working with any material with which they had not undergone a formal apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

. Only a marchand-mercier who worked outside of the guild system, therefore, could mount Chinese porcelain

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...

s with gilt

Gilding

The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...

-bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 handles and stands, fit the cabinetmaker's furniture with Japanese lacquer

Lacquer

In a general sense, lacquer is a somewhat imprecise term for a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required...

 or Sèvres porcelain plaques, and supply furniture with opulent gilt-bronze (or ormolu

Ormolu

Ormolu is an 18th-century English term for applying finely ground, high-karat gold in a mercury amalgam to an object of bronze. The mercury is driven off in a kiln...

 mounts.

The general lines permitted to their métier were set out under Charles IX, in 1570, as:

"Wholesale merchants, drapers and jewelers, in such way that under this status of wholesaler (estat de grossier) have been included at all times the merchants of cloth of gold

Cloth of gold

Cloth of gold is a fabric woven with a gold-wrapped or spun weft - referred to as "a spirally spun gold strip". In most cases, the core yarn is silk wrapped with a band or strip of high content gold filé...

, of silver, of silk... tapestries

Tapestry

Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...

, jewellery, spiced goods, textiles, hammered copper, silk thread, hardware and the like, of which it is not permitted to have any manufacture whatsoever, but only to sell, buy, display, bedeck and beautify all kinds of merchandise"

Thus the marchands-merciers were characterised in the Encyclopédie

Encyclopédie

Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...

as "sellers of everything, makers of nothing"". Jacques Savary des Bruslons elaborated this lapidary remark and revealed the disdain of his generation towards handcrafts:

"This Corporation is considered the noblest and most excellent of all the Corporations of Merchants, all the more because those who compose it do not labour at all and make no handiwork, if it were not to beautify those things that are already made and manufactured"

Though they were confined by law to no narrow specialisation, the Parisian marchands-merciers followed narrow fields— Savary distinguished twenty— following the usages of their training and their connections, in highly competitive fields dominated by fashion. Among them a small group of marchands-merciers specialised in works of art, catering to an elite circle of connoisseurs and collectors towards the middle of the 18th century, when a vogue for exoticism expressed itself in chinoiserie

Chinoiserie

Chinoiserie, a French term, signifying "Chinese-esque", and pronounced ) refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences...

. Savary's Dictionnaire detailed the wares of:

"those who sell pictures, prints, candelabras, wall-lights, girandoles of gilded brass and [patinated] bronze, crystal chandeliers, figures of bronze, marble, wood and other material; cabinets, coffers, armoires, table, little tables, and candlestands put together of wood and gilded, marble tables and other merchandise and curiosities proper for the ornament of lodgings."

These entrepreneurs helped guide and even create fashions, such as that for Chinese porcelains, mounted in purely French gilt bronze, transforming a vase into a ewer with rococo lip and handle, or reversing one bowl over another, with an open-work gilt-bronze rim, to function as a perfume-burner. Only a marchand-mercier could marshal the resources required to create such objects. Marchands-merciers bought Japanese lacquer screens and boxes, had them dispantled and their wooden backing shaved down, then commissioned ébénistes like Bernard II Vanrisamberg or Joseph Baumhauer

Joseph Baumhauer

Joseph Baumhauer was a prominent Parisian ébéniste, one of several of German extraction. Having worked for some years as a journeyman for the German-born ébéniste François Reizell, he was appointed ébéniste privilegié du Roi in 1767, enabling him to skirt certain requirements of the Paris guild...

 to produce furniture veneered with exotic lacquer panels shaped to fit the complex curves of Louis XV surfaces, and perhaps completed with French imitations, or entirely japanned in Vernis Martin

Vernis Martin

In interior design, vernis Martin is a type of lacquer named for the French brothers Guillaume and Etienne-Simon Martin. It is an imitation Chinese lacquer and was applied to a wide variety of items, from furniture to coaches...

, which might imitate Chinese blue and white porcelain decors, such as the blue-on-white ensemble of furniture Hébert delivered in 1743 for Mme de Mailly

The influence of the marchands-merciers on French porcelain is also considerable. Lazare Duvaux alone bought three-fifths of the total output of Sèvres in 1757, representing a total of 165,876 livres. Certain forms in the Sèvres archives carry the names of well-known marchands-merciers in their designations.

Membership in the corps was carefully controlled. A new member, born in France, had to undergo an apprenticeship

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

 of three years, followed by another three as a compagnon, during which time he was bound to remain unmarried. His master could take on but one apprentice at a time, and the apprenticeships were duly enregistred at the corporation's offices in rue du Petit-Lion (rue Quincampoix). A sum changed hands, estimated by Guillaume Glorieux as averaging about 1720 500 or 600 livres, and a larger sum was owed to the corporation when the individual was received master (maîtris), some 1700 livres. There were two exceptions to this rule, made for purveyors to the Court— marchands privilégié suivant le cour— by decree of the king, and for those who married the daughter of one of the accredited merchants.

The Parisian marchands-merciers congregated in rue Saint-Honoré

Rue Saint-Honoré

The rue Saint-Honoré is an ancient street in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France.It is named after the collegial Saint-Honoré church situated in ancient times within the cloisters of Saint-Honoré....

, marking their establishments with catchy and amusing signs; there could be found the premises of Hébert, Simon-Philippe Poirier— and later at the same premises at the sign of the Golden Crown his partner Dominique Daguerre

Dominique Daguerre

Dominique Daguerre was a Parisian marchand-mercier who was in partnership from 1772 with Simon-Philippe Poirier, an arbiter of taste and the inventor of furniture mounted with Sèvres porcelain plaques; Daguerre assumed Poirier's business at La Couronne d'Or in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1777/78...

 and Martin-Eloi Lignereux— Mme Dulac, Julliot, Lebrun at the King of the Indies and Tuard au château de Bellevue

Château de Bellevue

The Château de Bellevue was a small château built for Madame de Pompadour in 1750. It was constructed on a broad plateau in Meudon, above a slope overlooking the Seine to the east, but was demolished in 1823 and little remains....

. Nearby, in rue de la Monnaie, the street where the manufacture royale of Sèvres

Manufacture nationale de Sèvres

The manufacture nationale de Sèvres is a Frit porcelain porcelain tendre factory at Sèvres, France. Formerly a royal, then an imperial factory, the facility is now run by the Ministry of Culture.-Brief history:...

 eventually chose to open its porcelain shop, were Darnault, father and son, at the sign of the King of Spain, and Lazare Duvaux

Lazare Duvaux

Lazare Duvaux was a Parisian marchand-mercier, among the most prominent designers and purveyors of furnishings, gilt-bronze-mounted European and Chinese porcelains, Vincennes porcelain and later Sèvres porcelain and all the small, refined luxuries that appealed to Mme de Pompadour, one of his...

. Edme-François Gersaint, for whom Watteau painted L'Enseigne de Gersaint

L'Enseigne de Gersaint

L'Enseigne de Gersaint, or "Gersaint's Shopsign", is a painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau, which is considered to be his last masterpiece. It was painted as a shop sign for the marchand-mercier, or art dealer, Edme François Gersaint...

as a shop sign had premises, following an old tradition, in a house on the Pont Notre-Dame

Pont Notre-Dame

The Pont Notre-Dame is a bridge that crosses the Seine in Paris, France linking the quai de Gesvres on the Rive Droite with the quai de la Corse on the Île de la Cité...

. There, he advertised in 1740, he

"Sells all sorts of new and tasteful hardware (Cainquaillerie), trinkets, mirrors, cabinet pictures, pagods, lacquer and porcelain from Japan, shellwork and other specimens of natural history, stones, agates, and generally all curious and exotic merchandise".

A newcomer, Granchet, opened premises Au petit Dunkerque, in the Left Bank, Quai Conti at the far end of the Pont Neuf

Pont Neuf

The Pont Neuf is, despite its name, the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. Its name, which was given to distinguish it from older bridges that were lined on both sides with houses, has remained....

.

Among these entrepreneurial dealers and interior decorators at the apex of their profession, towards the middle of the century Hébert achieved the greatest celebrity, appearing in the popular novel Thémidore (1745) and marrying his daughter to the son of the Dauphine

Maria Josepha of Saxony

Maria Josepha of Saxony was Queen consort of Spain as the wife of King Ferdinand VII of Spain...

's first femme de chambre in 1751, in a contract signed at Versailles.