It’s the birthday of a genius from Alsace, who has largely contributed to the image of Epinal de l’Alsace, sorry, I couldn’t find any Alsatian reference. Charles Spindler was born on March 11, 1865 in Boersch. His father, Edmond Michel Balthazar was a notary then a justice of the peace, his grandfather, François-Xavier Spindler was an architect of Strasbourg Cathedral.
In other words, he was from a good family. At the age of twelve, Charles took drawing lessons with the widow of Théophile Schuler, then studied painting at the academies of Düsseldorf, Munich and Berlin. While on vacation in Alsace, he met Anselme Laugel who had just resigned from his duties as quaestor to the senate to oversee the harvest at his wine estate in Saint-Léonard.
Anselme offers his first workshop to Charles Spindler and they have passionate discussions together on the specificity of an Alsace to be reinvented. Note that Alsace was German at that time, and that Charles Spindler is clearly Francophile. Laugel offers hospitality to the artists that Charles presents to him. Notably Josef non, Josef Sattler with whom Spindler created Images alsaciennes between 1893 and 1896, illustrations of the stories and legends of Alsace. The circle is growing with exceptional talents such as Gustave Stoskopf, Paul Braunagel, Léo Schnugg or the Baden Lothar von Seebach. These art and Alsace enthusiasts form the Cercle de Saint-Léonard which peacefully sounds the Alsatian awakening against the German Kulturkampf. In 1893, Charles Spindler discovered marquetry, following an order for drawings. The young man of twenty-eight trades in his brushes for the master marquetry knife.
He clearly reinvented marquetry and elevated it to the rank of art. The inlaid furniture of the master of Boersch meets with the Strasbourg merchant Bader-Nottin the favors of the public. In 1900, the grand prize at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, awarded to its music room, made Alsatian marquetry world famous, it looked very stylish in an interior.
Charles Spindler also creates the Revue Alsacienne Illustrée and participates in the creation of the Alsatian Theater and the Alsatian Museum of Strasbourg while his creations triumph in the world at exhibitions in Turin, Saint-Louis, in the United States, but not in South-Alsace. , then in Dresden and at the Universal Exhibition of 1925. On his death in 1938, his son Paul perpetuated the Spindler signature, then it was Jean-Charles Spindler who took over the Saint-Léonard workshop. The circle of Saint-Léonard changed the face of Alsace forever, inside and out. And the center of this circle was undoubtedly Charles Spindler.
Spindler art marquetry website.
Charles Spindler’s Wikipedia page.