Identical to what it could have been in the 19th century, the Lorin workshop in Chartres has been protected as a historical monument since 1999.
It all started in 1863 when Nicolas Lorin set up a stained glass art workshop in the lower town on the banks of the Eure in a first building before moving to the historic site which has made the house famous until today.
Its large windows and the exhibition tower, located on the south side of Chartres Cathedral, allow you to take full advantage of the outside light to admire all the colors and textures of the stained glass windows.
For 6 generations the activity has never ceased, three generations of Lorins keep the factory alive between 1863 and 1973, then other master glassmakers take over. This continuity has made it possible to preserve more than 6,000 site references, including tools, models and even original drawings.
There is an incredible archive that today allows us to work on stained glass restoration projects that were carried out several decades ago.
For example, the stained glass windows of the Cathedral of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), which were made by the workshop in 1880, will be restored thanks to the original boxes of the stained glass windows still present in the reserves.
–
The workshop has orders from abroad whether in Europe in Brussels, Vienna or Rome but also on other continents in Sidney, Jerusalem and Baltimore.
For the Universal Exhibition of 1878 in Paris Nicolas Lorin will go so far as to have his own exhibition pavilion built on the Champ de Mars.
A photo was recently found in the archives of the workshop on which we see the inscription “Stained glass art – N. LORIN painter glassmaker in Chartres”.
–
In 2017, the workshop was placed in compulsory liquidation but two of its employees Elodie Vally and François Ratkoff, master glassmakers in the company since 2004, took up the torch in association with a Claire Babet, master glassmaker at Bourdinière Saint-Loup .
The city of Chartres bought all the buildings to restore them and open them to the public.
Elodie Vally is now alone at the head of the House Lorin accompanied by a team chosen for the quality of its technical skills both for the restoration of stained glass windows but also for contemporary creation.
An inventory work is underway with the help of the city of Chartres and the Centre-Val de Loire region to reference all of the 6,000 creations that have come out of the workshop over the past 150 years.
–
