Bernard Rosenblum

Bernard Rosenblum, Master Leather Craftsman

Bernard Rosenblum (1927–2007) was a Master Craftsman Gilder and Art Restorer of the National Museums, the successor of the workshop Gainerie (word with no English translation:"Leather Crafts Arts") Bettenfeld. He was awarded the Medal of deportation and detention policies as well as Commander of the Order of Civic Education.

Early life

In 1940 he entered the School of Fine Arts d'Angers. Then in 1941, due to the emergency laws of the Vichy government, he was prohibited from all studies. At the end of the Second World War, at the great liberation, he successively discovered the craft of upholstering in the workshops Vial, Veil and Reperman in which he was employed as a foreman, but he found that the saddle and leather work was just a technical and commercial transaction. A little disillusioned, he abandoned, for a time, the craft of leatherwork.

Having a strong attraction for the arts, especially painting and sculpture, he became a pupil of Alberto Giacometti and Emmanuel Mane-Katz, during the golden era of Montparnasse. A family friend, who was an upholsterer, entrusted to him in 1960 the work of restoration of leather antiques, allowing him to make a living during this period in Montparnasse. He rediscovered leather and fell in love with its history. At that time he was to begin a research on leather and leather goods, in museums and libraries, which would never cease throughout his life.

He settled in 1963, as Upholsterer-Gilder, Rue de Reuilly in Paris, in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine district. He quickly created an excellent reputation. In 1965 Suzanne Bettenfeld proposed to him the succession of the prestigious Bettenfeld Studio, which then became the Studio Bettenfeld-Rosenblum. He also never stopped collecting the tools that are essential to his craft, bookbinding tools, rollers and gilding plates. Including his participation with Roger Devauchelle to buy the workshop Gruel-Engelmann; he helped create one of the largest collections of postwar tools for gilding leather.

He became a preferred Master Restorer for the national museums and great decorators and antique dealers in France and elsewhere; his clients included General Charles de Gaulle, Jean Dutourd, Claude Lévi-Strauss, King Hassan II of Morocco, the former court of Iran, and institutions such as the Army Museum, Rueil-Malmaison, Saumur, Versailles, the Paris Conservatoire.

He died suddenly in 2007. His son, David Rosenblum, reopened the studio in 2010.

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