India Pavilion

The India Pavilion is a vestige of the world exposition of 1878 presenting the British Indies. The building, commanded by the Prince of Wales and designed to be ephemeral, was eventually bought by Prince George Barbu Stirbei in 1882. This was then the property of Bécon Park and had acquired this Pavilion as well as that of Sweden to establish the workshops of the two daughters of his ears, widow Gustave Eugène Fould. The Swedish Pavilion became the painting studio of Consuelo Fould while George-Achille Fould took possession of a sculpture workshop in the Pavilion of India enlarged and reengineered for this purpose.

In 2012, the Pavilion, a fragile structure with no special assignments starting to threaten to disappear when its owner, the city of Courbevoie, initiated an important campaign to restore and save the building. At the end of a call for tenders, under the master of works of Frédéric Didier, Chief Architect of the historical monuments, the lot entrusted to the Atelier de Ricou grouped many aspects of the very interesting rehabilitation of the place, namely period room, exhibition space and artist's residence.

The main mission of the workshop was the painting of the interiors and exteriors of the building. Thus began the exciting work of research and reconstitution of authentic techniques: identification of the original red iron oxide pigment, formulation of a painting with boxite and walnut oil, restitution of large panels of canvas painted, but also gilding to the leaf of the seven spectacular bulbs that are cut in the courbevoisian sky.

And finally, the work of recoling and analysing the remnants of the pushrods and hardware stores which, both inside and outside, allowed the deployment of blinds. With the help of Patrice Nogrette for the bronzes, it was necessary to reforge all the shrouds and cleats that allowed the blinds to be operated. In a second time, we reproduced the models of curtains and blinds visible on the archival photographs and redraw the strips of cotton lace, which allowed Xavier bonnet to realize the blinds.

A very nice adventure and a realization that allowed to restore the ancestral techniques whose possible maintenance gives him such a beautiful ageing and this patina peculiar to the ancient monuments.