Alex Poignard Collection

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The Citizens' Living Culture Foundation, Alex Poignard Collection is a collection of objects from bourgeois living and everyday culture that Belgian confectionery manufacturer and retailer Alex Poignard has brought together. Its inventory includes more than fifty thousand items from the period between 1830 and 1930 from the Benelux countries , England, Italy, France and the German West.

History of origin

The Alex Poignard Collection

Alexandre Gaston Poignard was born in Antwerp in 1921 and grew up as the only surviving son of a wealthy pharmaceutical entrepreneur and trader in an upper-class family. On regular trips to the Belgian region of Wallonia (where his parents owned a holiday home in the small town of Sivry ), the young Alex Poignard got his first glimpses of a peasant, petty-bourgeois world that made a lasting impression on him. There he came into contact with objects that he did not know from everyday life in the city, such as the old stone pipes of the local farmers, their playing cards and tools as well as small souvenirs and postcards from the villages visited. At the age of 14 he found a porcelain Madonna figure in a granary, which is considered the cornerstone of his collection.

As a young man, in addition to the great joy of collecting, he had the idea of ​​collecting everyday items belonging to the bourgeoisie and keeping them for later generations. In the course of this, he began to expand a comprehensive collection. As the owner of a confectionery shop, he was able to combine his business trips through Belgium, Luxembourg, England, the Netherlands, France and Germany with his passion for collecting, so that he was always on the lookout for suitable items for his collection. In addition, as a committed collector, he closely followed current auctions and offers from regional and international antique dealers for over seven decades. Little by little he trained his connoisseurship, acquired specialist literature and became a regular visitor to the flea market, through which he acquired several objects per week. He was particularly interested in the products of early industrial production and manufacture, which went hand in hand with international economic development. His influence on leisure, education, hygiene, luxury and fashion interested him, which he later described as the main motivation for his collecting activities. He was particularly fond of so-called miniature objects (replicas of furniture and décor in small format that are true to the original), which are a focus of his collection.

Alex Poignard died in Oud-Turnhout in 2017 at the age of 96 and left behind a collection of more than fifty thousand artefacts, which contained several complete interiors of town houses and, in their entirety, made a valuable contribution to cultural history.

The Bourgeois Home Culture Foundation - Alex Poignard Collection

At a first exhibition with the title Lichtspiele in Malberg he met Richard Hüttel, a member of the Förderverein Schloss Malberg e. V., through which he finally met Ulrich Löber, the former director of the State Museum and representative of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate for museum issues. Both Löber and Poignard were avid collectors of items made from ebonite . The first contact with the German Foundation for Monument Protection was established through Ulrich Löber. The idea of ​​setting up a foundation of its own, whose purpose is to preserve and maintain the Alex Poignard collection, quickly matured. While various Belgian institutions had refused to take over the collection for structural reasons, the now over 80-year-old collector succeeded in working with the German Foundation for Monument Protection to find a solution for the continuation of his life's work.

In 2006, with the help of the German Foundation for Monument Protection , Alex Poignard was able to create the foundation for civil living culture, the Alex Poignard Collection with the purpose of preserving, restoring and maintaining, as well as presenting, researching and treating the Alex Collection, which is recognized under the Monument Protection Act of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate Poignard, promote, build. The Bürgerliche Wohnkultur Foundation is a non-legal foundation in the administration of the German Foundation for Monument Protection and is represented by the same in legal and business dealings. The following persons belong to the board of the foundation civil living culture: Andreas Schmauder , chairman (General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate, Directorate for Landesmuseum Koblenz), Baroness Elke von Wüllenweber, Deputy Chairwoman (German Foundation for Monument Protection), Steffen Skudelny (German Foundation for Monument Protection), Thomas Metz (General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate), Ludo van Herzeele (Turnhout) and Erich Engelke (Local Curator of the German Foundation for Monument Protection). A scientific advisory board is available to advise the board. The General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of Rhineland-Palatinate , Directorate for the Landesmuseum Koblenz , is responsible for the preservation, storage, inventory, maintenance, research and museum presentation of the collection.

Structure and inventory

The Alex Poignard Collection houses individual sub-collections, each of which is subject to a thematic focus. The basic structure can thus be described as a collection of collections that correspond to one another. Together, the various areas of the collection provide a representative insight into bourgeois living culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The entire inventory mainly includes objects from everyday domestic life, which thematize the areas of living, eating, hygiene, belief and play. Particularly noteworthy are the various completely preserved room furnishings.

The following excerpt from Alex Poignard's quick inventory from 2006 gives an insight into the extensive inventory:

  1. Porcelain, earthenware, glass, crystal from Western Europe
  2. Devotional objects: more than 500 Madonnas, crucifixes, representations of saints, small house chapels, graphics
  3. Toys: dolls, dollhouses, cars, trains, imageries: printed sheets with children's scenes to cut out and collect
  4. Playing cards and accessories (16th to 20th centuries)
  5. Button collection: tens of thousands of different materials, including pearls, jewelry (from Roman times to Sarah Bernard)
  6. Porcelain menu cards and stands (including figures and pairs of figures)
  7. Extensive collection of Liebig products: calendars that are extremely rare in the world, as well as Liebig trading cards that you got when you bought a Liebig product, as well as other products and posters.
  8. Extensive collection of Epinals: precursors to the comic; Woodcuts from the French City of Epinal
  9. Very extensive porcelain cards: porcelain paper, printed (1790–1850 from Belgium and France)
  10. old kitchen appliances, complete kitchen, marble table (around 1880)
  11. Hygiene and toilet articles: various bathrooms, sinks, soaps (original packaging), water heating installations before 1900
  12. Bakelite collection
  13. Ebonite collection
  14. Tin can collection (many of which were produced before 1900)
  15. Collection of smoking and tobacco: approx. 600 pipes, tobacco boxes, ashtrays, lighter figures
  16. Parisian salon clocks: porcelain (partly signed by Jacob Petit)
  17. Medical collection: medical devices, microscopes (17th / 18th century), complete treatment room of a dental practice (around 1880)
  18. Establishment of a confectionery factory
  19. Complete furnishing of an old pub; Marble tables, chairs, numerous glasses, bottles and billboards from the brewing industry
  20. Cheese Bell Collection
  21. Collection of stamps and seals made of various materials (silver, gold, porcelain)
  22. Collection of pocket watch carriers
  23. Collection of perfume bottles
  24. Art Nouveau collection: furniture, jewelry, glass paste
  25. Historical photographs, cameras and stereoscopes
  26. Historical trips: souvenirs and travel guides
  27. Easter eggs made of porcelain, crystal, silver, biscuit
  28. Lighting department (from oil to gas to electricity)
  29. Collection of liqueur bottles (1810 to 1900)
  30. Sewing machines, only rare models, including miniature models for children
  31. Art Nouveau glass and ceramics collection, decoration
  32. Collection of holy water vessels (richly decorated features)
  33. Andenne sculptures, many Madonnas, holy water vessels, saints, mythological figures and animals
  34. Furniture: Empire, Art Nouveau, Louis-Philipp, Charles X, also some Flemish furniture (17th century)
  35. Ceramic vases from Bequet
  36. Glass crystal and colored objects from Val-St.-Lambert

Location

For more than six decades, Alex Poignard kept his collection in various private houses and warehouses in Antwerp, where some of the objects in the collection were set up openly in his own living space and others were stored in cardboard boxes. Poignard regularly took part in exhibitions in Belgium with loans.

When the collection was taken over by the German Foundation for Monument Protection, the objects could be stored in their entirety in a depot in Koblenz . Since the beginning of its scientific processing by the Landesmuseum Koblenz (General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate), a small part of the collection has already moved to the museum depot at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress (Koblenz). The complete move of the collection to the museum depot is planned.

Exhibitions

  • Food cultures: A research exhibition with objects from the Poignard Collection . Landesmuseum Koblenz, from September 2020, BMBF joint project with the University of Bonn and the University of Koblenz-Landau , Koblenz campus
  • Presentation of Easter eggs from the Alex Poignard collection . Landesmuseum Koblenz, 2012
  • Alex Poignard Collection: Insights into his cabinet of curiosities . State Museum Koblenz, 2011
  • Plays of light . Malberg Castle, 1998

literature

  • Cordula Stadtfeld: Dished up. Menu holder from the Alex Poignard collection in the Landesmuseum , in: Verbundprojekt Esskulturen . Objects, practices, semantics (ed.): Table orders. Hierarchization and equalization , Bulletin Food Cultures, Folder I, 1st year 2019.
  • Mira Van Leewen,: The beard cup. From a collection object to an exhibition object, in: Verbundprojekt Essenkulturen. Objects, practices, semantics (ed.): Gender dietetics. Gender and Dining Conventions , Bulletin Esskulturen, Folder II, 1st year 2019. (Note: Seven editions of the Bulletin Esskulturen with objects from the Poignard Collection will be published for the Esskulturen exhibition project by the end of 2020.)
  • Paul Verbraeken: The collector Alex Poignard, German Foundation for Monument Protection, 2007

Web links

About the Foundation for Civil Living - Alex Poignard Collection

The research-based exhibition on food cultures in the Landesmuseum Koblenz

About the BMBF joint project Eating Cultures

Individual evidence

  1. Jump up ↑ Foundation for Bourgeois Living Culture - Alex Poignard Collection. German Foundation for Monument Protection , 2006, accessed on March 24, 2020 .
  2. ^ Paul Verbraeken: The collector Alex Poignard . Ed .: German Foundation for Monument Protection. 2007.
  3. ↑ Unpublished interview: Member of the board of the Bürgerliche Wohnkultur Foundation / Landesmuseum Koblenz, September 2019, Koblenz
  4. ^ Paul Verbraeken: The collector Alex Poignard . Ed .: German Foundation for Monument Protection. 2007.
  5. ↑ Elke von Wüllenweber : So that the past has a future . In: Malberger Schloßbote , Förderverein Schloß Malberg, issue 3, February 2007, pp. 13/14
  6. ↑ Information from the Foundation for Bürgerliche Wohnkultur on request by email, January 2020
  7. ↑ Information from the Landesmuseum Koblenz, 2020
  8. ^ Paul Verbraeken: The collector Alex Poinard . Ed .: German Foundation for Monument Protection. 2007.
  9. ↑ Information from the Landesmuseum Koblenz, 2020