Jules Maciet

Jules Maciet

Jules Maciet © ADAGP / Floc’h

Jules Maciet (1846-1911) is a french collector and contributor

Jules Maciet was born in Paris in 1846. After law studies, he began his lifetime mission : founding a collection with aim to inspire his coevals. He acquires a lot of pieces of art, gathering a various and eclectic collection : paintings, bronzes, pottery from Occident and Orient, prints, tapestry, oriental carpets... He regularly goes around museums, exhibitions, auction sales.[1]

In 1904 he made his first gift to the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs (a french cultural institution regrouping museums, libraries, places about lifestyle, fine arts, design, fashion...). He then offered the UCAD more than 2300 works of art until his death in 1911.[2]

Besides his collection, he made a huge documenting work. Collecting hundreds of articles and images from art books, he extracted and classified images into methodical series, into what we call today the "albums Maciet". These albums are nowadays a real treasure of informations to the public.

The Maciet albums

The collection of albums made by Jules Maciet is composed of 4727 albums, for a total of almost 400 000 pages and one million of images, getting into 62 themes as architecture, jewelry, fashion, textiles, decoration, mythology, animals, writing, printings, botany... The Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs has begun to scan these albums, and now 60 000 pages from 700 albums are available online for research.[3]