Le Creusot

Le Creusot, Cote d’Or, is a town of 30,000 inhabitants famous throughout France for its iron industry.

Iron production began in the area in the 18th century, and was brought to a peak under the Schneider family who diversified the product range of the firm to include machine parts used in railways, armaments and power stations - earning the town the dubious honour of being bombarded during World War II.

300px-Usines_du_creusot.jpg

The Schneider family shaped the town in more ways than one; they were strongly paternalist, and set up a maternity home, schools, gymnasiums, a hospital, a retirement home, and a cemetery, providing for their workers at every stage of their lives. Workers were married in the town hall and the church built by the Schneiders, and there was even a sort of social security benefit, long before the French state entertained the possibility of such a thing.

The family themselves lived in the local chateau, which began life as a glassworks and is today a museum, the last of the Schneiders having died in 1960. One of the features of the complex is a charming theatre converted from one of the original glass ovens - another is now a chapel.

The industrial character of the town has continued, and today many global industrial companies have sites at Le Creusot, including GEC Alsthom.




Why not visit our Art Wiki? You can read or write about art and artists. And even add a page about yourself…

".. Renoir, Picasso, Cubism, Renaissance art, Georges Seurat, Michael Asher, da Vinci, lautrec, leger, Joan Miro, Impressionism, Edvard Munch, Hans Holbein, Matisse, realism, rococo, baroque, Bosch art, Mark Rothko, orkin, poynter, pollock, Geoff Bunn art, Turner, Sol LeWitt, hirst, emin, Max Ernst, still-life, Richard Serra, landscapes, Primitivism, John Sargent, Madge Gill, pre-raphaelites, Conceptualism, Claude Monet, art brut, art povera, Mel Bochner, bridget riley, LS Lowry, Expressionism, modigliani, Marcel Duchamp, Victor Burgin, dada, surrealism and much more besides…"

The Art Wiki

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License