Marcel Carbonel collected almost all the figurines made by his colleagues, always following the same precept. His private collection is made up of original pieces made of clay (cooked or raw), papier-mâché, carved and precious wood, Murano spun glass, plaster, ceramics, porcelain, polychrome, corn, cork, fabrics (dressed figurines). In 1997, this collection was highlighted through a museum allowing visitors to explore this craft. From Marcel Carbonel's private collection of more than four thousand five hundred pieces, only 2 pieces are exhibited... techniques from yesterday and today, from here and elsewhere: raw clay, terracotta, polychrome , carved wood, corn, cork, wood and paper, wood and fabrics, wood and lead, Murano spun glass, plaster, ceramics, porcelain... Two competitions for Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (his own and that of Émilie Puccinelli) are also on display. -Meunier), a collection of plaster molds by Jean-Louis Lagnel and Auguste Pellegrini, sculptor from Marseille. The Marcel Carbonel Museum also hosts the greatest international signatures: Volaire, Gaubert-Caillol, Guiomar, Grasso, Peppe, Guichard, Neveu Family, Filippi, Berger, Pontet, Abramo Grotaglie, Marie Simon, Abbé Sumien, Jouve, Griscione, Cruz Avalos , Pierre Graille…
Guided tours by appointment only. The visits include the explanation of the manufacturing stages in the workshops, the visit to the Museum and access to the shop…Due to the strong seasonality of their activities, visits are not possible between October 1 and January 15 . Open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 14 p.m. to 18 p.m.
Victor Marcel Carbonel, known as Marcel Carbonel
Born in Lyon on July 25, 1911, died in Marseille on May 25, 2003 at the age of 92, was a Marseille santon maker, dean of his profession. To illustrate the work of Marcel Carbonel, it is appropriate to recall the sentence of Frédéric Mistral which can be summed up as follows: " Clay is in the hands of the Santon maker what man is in the hands of God. Before starting his activity, Marcel Carbonel exercised several small trades including porter, taxi driver, wattman, courier. In 1928, he left the school of fine arts, for lack of means following the death of his father Victor. He then learned the trade of lithographer. In 1935, he moved into premises on rue Fort-Notre-Dame in the 7th arrondissement in Marseille, a city in which he had lived since the age of one. He is accompanied by his wife Clotilde, a moulder and two decorators that he employs. To make the original mold of a new creation called "mother mold", he uses yellowish colored plaster of Paris; its particularities are the fineness of the imprint, its density and its solidity. For the reproduction moulds, he uses a less hard plaster which makes it easier to unmold the subject. The shape of breeding molds is important; it is rounded at the top of the mold to facilitate serial stamping. Then, he lets the santon dry and bakes it in an electric oven at a temperature that gradually reaches 980°C.
Angler Pastel collection – 2021
He decorates his figurines with gouaches of his own making. Thanks to his training as a lithographer, he developed his own gouaches by manually grinding pigments with hard gum arabic, called "Kitir", which he decanted himself. It uses 20 base pigments, red ocher, yellow ocher, sienna, burnt sienna, helios red, alizarin red, syrian rose, burgundy, chrome green, valentine green, alizarin purple, hansa yellow, chrome yellow, cobalt blue, manganese blue, ultramarine blue, Prussian blue, ivory black (Animal black), titanium white, lithopone white, which he mixes to create his own palette of 124 listed colors and dosed. This process, according to his experience, makes it possible to obtain more vivid and dazzling colors than the commercial tube gouaches generally used by other santon makers. For the decoration of the santon, he uses brushes made of Kolinsky sable hair. In 1950 he moved to a gallery at No. 2 rue du commandant de Surian still in the 7th arrondissement; its workforce was then 10 employees.
Thereafter, he expands on the gallery and continues to hire and train apprentices. His grandson, Philippe Renoux-Carbonel, joined him in 1973 at the age of 15 to begin his apprenticeship.
Creation of the Marcel Carbonel Workshops
In 1977, at the age of 66, he retired. Although he no longer invests in the management of his business, this in no way prevents him from continuing to create nativity scenes and santons in his workshop, which he keeps on rue du commandant de Surian. He entrusts his daughter, Danielle, and his son-in-law, Alfred Renoux, with the creation of the SARL Les Ateliers Marcel Carbonel, his grandson being too young to run the company. A logo is specially created for this event. In 1947, he was elected President of the santonniers' union, a mandate he held for twenty-one years. With the participation of Jean Héritier, he is the creator in 1958 of the international Salon of santonniers in the city of Arles, a salon which will survive him; he expressed himself thus during the creation of the Salon d'Arles: " In the name of all my comrades, I come to ask you for the right of asylum in your city, in these very places where our dear santons received their final consecration. We express the wish that a selection of quality appear here permanently; spiritual capital of Provence, Arles had to welcome its most noble craftsmen. The Salon d'Arles must be, as they wished, the opportunity to bring together their ideas based on their works and to be an artistic confrontation that we want, among all, to be fruitful."
In 1961, the santon-making discipline returned to the Sorbonne where Marcel Carbonel would be the first santon-maker to be distinguished as Meilleur Ouvrier de France; this discipline is still in force. On May 9, 2003, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor.
