Louis Majorelle, the son of a cabinet-maker, Auguste Majorelle, who worked in Nancy and specialized in reproduction 18th C. furniture. He was trained as a painter (under Millet in Paris) but gave up on painting and returned to Nancy to run the family workshops when his father died in 1879. Until 1890 he continued to work, like his father, in 18th C. styles for furniture. In the 1880s Gallé's first Art Nouveau pieces of furniture were made (in Nancy), and by 1900 Majorelle had so successfully turned over to the new style that he had become the main producer of Art Nouveau furniture and perhaps Europe. He mechanized his workshops, which were said to have been 'organized in the manner of a big industrial concern': and although his factory produced nothing that could not have been made as well, if not better, by the techniques of hand-craftsmanship, it was able to produce luxury furniture at a price within the range of the middle class.
