Nicolas Villeroy
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Nicolas Villeroy (born May 14, 1759 in Metz ; † December 28, 1843 ) was born as the youngest of seven children of Claude Villeroy and Catherine Drouot. In Traben-Trarbach on the Moselle , he completed a commercial apprenticeship at Richard Böcking's winery, whose daughter Thérèse-Sophie he married in 1786. From 1784 he worked as sales manager for the Saint-Avold saltworks administration . There he met Jean-François Boch , who was 23 years his junior , with whom he founded the internationally known ceramics company Villeroy & Boch in 1836 .
Factory in Frauenberg
Jean Thibault started his own business as a stoneware manufacturer in Frauenberg near Saargemünd in 1785 . Four years later he was able to convince Nicolas Villeroy to join him as a partner in the “fabrique de faience en cailloutage imitant la porcelaine” in Frauenberg. A certain Kayser was also involved in the faience.
Move to Vaudrevange
In 1791 he moved the stoneware manufacture to Wallerfangen , which at that time was a small farming village with 580 inhabitants. He decided on the one hand because of the waterway of the Saar and above all because of the coal mining in the Saar area for this location.
At first Villeroy couldn't find enough employees, which is why he brought the first workers with him from Frauenberg. Initially, he put the technical management in the hands of an experienced employee from Frauenberg.
On May 15, 1797, Nicolas Villeroy bought the shares from them. For the period 1800–1801 Villeroy is mentioned as the sole owner of the manufactory.
In order to reduce the consumption of wood and thus keep the price of its products low, Villeroy decided on the new fuel, hard coal .
In 1798 he then acquired mining concessions for a nearby coal mine in Hostenbach / Saar, the management of which he entrusted to his brother Pierre Villeroy. Although he did not succeed in getting the difficulties of coal firing under control like his competitor Jean-François Boch, he was already burning with two coal stoves in 1800. The second field in which he experimented like Francois Boch was decor printing.
Around 1815 he hired special specialists who at that time still came mainly from England. His first British guest workers - some of them even from the porcelain town of Stoke-on-Trent - he recruited from a prisoner-of-war camp in nearby Saarlouis. Many years later, the English influence in Wallerfangen was considerable. In the years that followed, Nicolas Villeroy often traveled to England to familiarize himself with the local production processes.
French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
In the years of the French Revolution , which were also the early years of the factory, production and workforce increased steadily, but Nicolas Villeroy noted in his notes that the factory had only made a profit in the ninth year of his responsibility. Nicolas Villeroy acquired additional parts of the former Norbertine -Abtei Abbey Wadgassen . He had the mill located there rebuilt for processing raw materials. The Napoleonic Wars brought another setback . Only after 1815, the year of the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte , could the manufacture develop again.
On January 1, 1816, Nicolas Villeroy entrusted the management of the company to his four children. However, he reserved the right to administer his blind daughter Caroline's share. When she died in 1819, he was formally again a quarter of the owner. The plant continued to operate under the name of Nicolas Villeroy until the merger agreement between Villeroy and Jean-François Boch was finally concluded on April 14, 1836 in the Saarmühle in Fremersdorf.
Nicolas Villeroy died in 1843.
literature
- Guido Müller: The Villeroy and de Galhau families in Saarland , Saarlouis 1991.
- Therese Thomas: The role of the Boch and Villeroy families in the 18th and 19th centuries , Saarbrücken 1974.
- Beatrix Adler: Wallerfanger stoneware. Krüger Druck + Verlag, Dillingen 1994, ISBN 3-921236-72-X .
- Villeroy and Boch AG: Since 1748. The future has tradition , Saarbrücken 1998.
- Rainer Desens: Villeroy & Boch, 1748 - 1998 , A Quarter of a Millennium European Industrial History, Saarbrücken 1998.
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Villeroy, Nicolas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Iron caster and founder of the ceramics company Villeroy & Boch |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1759 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Metz |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 28, 1843 |