Louis Sorel

Louis Sorel (1867- 1933)  studied archtitecture at Vaudemer in Paris, and then worked with Lecoeur. Sorel belonged to the group “l'Art dans tout” (art in everything), which was around from 1896 to 1901, and proposed, like its name suggests, to bring art into all types of interior decoration.
Created and presided by Tony Selmersheim from 1895, the society of five played a precursory role. Seated around their founder were four decorators, Felix Aubert, Alexandre Charpentier, Jean Dampt and Etienne Morceau Nélaton. This new association was joined by the architect Charles Plumet and became the “society of six”, before finally adopting the name “L'art dans tout”, with the arrival of several new members in 1897, including Louis Sorel and Henri Sauvage.
Louis Sorel was very close to architect Charles Plumet, with whom he exhibited works at the national society of fine arts. They both sought to achieve a high level of refinement in the smallest details of their creations, and they often worked with the same collaborators, Tony Selmersheim and Dampt.  Sorel was a fruitful architect who made a number of buildings, villas and little châteaux (Pommery in Reims), mainly in Paris, Trouville and Neuilly Sur Seine.
In 1904, he built a building situated on 9 rue Le Tasse in Paris for Mr. Perrier. His friend Plumet had been using loggia arches for a long time, a feature that became very characteristic of his work. Sorel shamelessly copied the idea, and used it as the main decorative element of a very bourgeois building, with remarkable symmetry. He added a bit of colour to its façade by using vast red bricks. The detail on the metalwork and sculptures is remarkable. The main door, still considered an architect's bravura piece in the 1900s, has a particularly elegant doorknob, where two salamanders tenderly intertwine. The sculptures on the façade, follow the well known plant repertoire of the Art Nouveau style, and were made by Pierre Seguin.
Louis Sorel, Hector Guirmand or Théo Petit were prolific architects, who added remarkable details to their buildings, such as, embossed doors, historiated drain pipes etc. These architects sought to enhance the original motifs found on façades.
In 1912, Sorel designed the decorative programme for the auxiliary Société d'Alimentation on the corner of boulevard Raspail and rue de Sèvres, in Paris, in collaboration with his friend, the architect Félix Aubert.
Nowadays two works by Louis Sorel feature in the general inventory of Cutural Heirage, the town hall and the school of Cléry in Somme, in Picardie, which he was asked to make by Maurice Fenaille in 1919; and an artist's house situated in Vincennes made out of bricks and slate.