The Birth of the Brand

Vanessa Hahusseau, the founder of Le Grand Siècle, comes from a background made of literacy, curiosity and affinity for beautiful things. She maintained strong interest in history, literature, and art, while graduating from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, and developed a passionate affinity for decorative arts.

After working in a Paris-based PR agency as a major account press executive, she decided to revitalize her professional life by harnessing her creativity and feel for the spirit of the time. She launched her first brand, Le Grand Cirque, in Aix-en-Provence in 2012, for which she designed highly graphic, innovative, yet practical, and adapted to modern lifestyle, wallcoverings. After several years of a successful business, she saw the opportunity for adding new dimension and scale to it.

It was by late 2016, while visiting the “Spectacular Second Empire” exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, that she discovered, and was awestruck by the superb 19th century panoramic mural Le Jardin d’Armide. Overflowing with flowers and luxurious foliage, it was a revelation to her, an astounding form of paintwork on paper whose existence she had neither known of nor suspected.

This overwhelming experience was only the first of many. Gaining access to the vaults of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in particular, Vanessa discovered a fabulous wealth of antique wallpapers and murals. The intense emotion of discovering these great wood-paneled treasures gave birth to the ambition of bringing these great works back to light and life.

Two years were needed to bring the project to fruition, i.e. selecting the artworks, restoring them, finding the best manufacturers and craftsmen, and overseeing the historical research. The digital restoration of the artworks in particular was a colossal effort. Removing the marks of time, rebuilding incomplete patterns, reviving colors drained by time, all called for infinite patience, made worthwhile however, by the intimate knowledge and experience of the art this endeavor entailed.

The long labor hours never dimmed Vanessa’s conviction that each effort, however small, contributed to the greater ideal of bringing to light works of art otherwise invisible in museum vaults and cellars, enabling a new vision and understanding of these decorative treasures from the 18th and 19th centuries, and eventually bringing them to new life in 21st century interiors, offering a true homage to French Arts Décoratifs, the wonderful gift of Le Grand Siècle.