User:LethalWyatt/sandbox/Paul Beau

Paul Beau (1 November 1871 - 7 July 1949) was a metal craftsman and a leading member of the Canadian Arts & Crafts movement. Beau’s career peaked from 1920 to 1926 when he supervised a wrought iron workshop at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa with a commission to supply a broad range of decorative metal work for the central building restoration.

He began his career as a clock maker and an antiques dealer. Largely self-taught, Beau honed his skills working copper, brass and iron through observation during antique-buying trips abroad, studying museum collections in Paris, New York, London and Brussels.

After 1906, Paul Beau & Co. refer to themselves as “Artistic Metal Workers offering Antique Art Goods, Old Clocks, Ancient Arms, Brass and Copper Jardinieres.” He maintained a shop and residence from 1915 - 1922 at 291 Mountain Street in Montreal.

Paul Beau was part of the Arts and Crafts movement in Canada. With the onset of cheap and rapid methods of machine manufacture in the applied arts, quick profits quickly outweighed the respect and demand for the craftsman-artist. Beau refused to rely on machines and worked in the tradition of the early European metalsmiths.

A characteristic feature of Beau's works is the combination of metals of contrasting colours, such as employing brass for the body of an object and trimming it with decorative bands of red copper.

The style of Beau's works would vary from jardiniere of Gothic inspired motifs, or an urn of classical shape ornamented with Greek geometric patterns, to a letterbox with embossed naturalistic leaves after British arts and crafts design.

Beau was fond of adding ornate, cast brass plaques or handles and feet to his pieces, while keeping the main body of the piece as simple as possible. Often, Beau would treat the brass with chemicals to produce a shiny dark brown patina, which was intended to give the piece an antique look. This antique or bronzed appearance was admired by Beau's clients and often preferred to the bright lustre of new brass.

To identify his work, Paul Beau usually, but not always, stamped the metal with his mark: PAUL BEAU & Co/MONTREAL within a circle. This is the most common form of his mark but some pieces (late 1920s to the 1940s, when Beau no longer ran his shop) are known to simply bear the name, PAUL BEAU.

Paul Beau received some recognition for his first architectural commissions from the Montreal firm of Edward and William S. Maxwell. The Maxwell brothers were responsible for many domestic residences and public buildings in Montreal including hotels, railway stations and civic buildings in other Canadian cities. According to the architects' record books, Paul Beau executed architectural orders on a regular basis from 1903 to 1916, creating electric fixtures, fireplace accessories, door hardware, wrought-iron grilles, lanterns and weather vanes for the Maxwells' buildings. He produced interior furnishings for some of Montréal’s grandest homes and was commissioned in 1910 to produce decorative ironwork for Saskatchewan’s legislative building after E & WS Maxwell were awarded the project following an international architectural competition.

As a result of his reputation as a metalsmith, Paul Beau was commissioned to undertake the ornamental hand-wrought ironwork in the Centre Block of the Federal Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. The Centre Block was destroyed by fire in 1916 and plans to rebuild took shape immediately under the government of Robert Borden. At the request of chief architect John A. Pearson, an ornamental wrought iron shop was established on the northeast corner of the parliamentary grounds with Paul Beau installed as its supervisor. The shop employed skilled blacksmiths and metal workers during its operation from early 1920 until the summer of 1926. Much of Beau’s work for the neo-Gothic Centre Block was produced after designs prepared by Gamble Sheridan Lemasnie, and included fireplace accessories, hinges, vanes, grilles, light fixtures, wrought iron gates and railings. For Paul Beau, this Ottawa commission was the high point in his career.

The Centre Block commission and one in the 1930s for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts sustained Beau for a time until the Second World War when there was little demand for his work. Metal was scarce due to the war when copper and brass were needed for wartime manufacturing. Destitute in his seventy-eighth year, Paul Beau took his own life under the large cross atop Mount Royal overlooking Montreal.