Marbriers de Paris: the popular market for funerary monuments in nineteenth-century Paris

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the nineteenth century significant attention has been given to the role of architects and sculptors in the modern cemeteries of Paris. This is particularly true of places such as Père-Lachaise where their role in the commemoration of noteworthy individuals has driven tourism as well as scholarship, past and present. Yet the tombs that architects designed were by far the exception to the rule. As the demand for funerary monuments grew in the wake of the 1804 burial reforms, the need for a commercial market for affordable tomb structures supervened. The result of this new demand for grave markers that could appeal to all levels of society was the emergence of a specialized funerary monuments trade. Regulatory changes, popular print media, and architectural discourses of the period all indicate that the rising demand for monuments not only fueled the growth of a popular market, but also led to the stigmatization of marbriers as opportunistic and greedy. Likewise the marbriers’ clients were derided as vain consumers of cheap ‘knock-offs’ that substituted luxuries otherwise inaccessible and inappropriate to their social standing. The present study utilizes a database constructed from the commercial almanacs of Paris (1798–1907) in order to track the development of the marbrerie (stonework) and examine the low end of the funerary monuments market. Although past methods of approaching the cemetery in nineteenth-century Paris, have greatly underestimated the role of marbriers, this article argues for the reconsideration of funerary monuments through the lens of the popular market.