Emilienne Chatenet, Une maison remplie de collections / House full of collections

 

images published here in agreement with Francis David

A house filled with collections does not necessarily have to possess an artistic aura, yet the images in this article display such a colorful and artistic character that one could speak of an art environment in the capacity of a decorated interior.

Life and works

The collection was assembled by Emilienne Chatenet, who lived in Romainville, a suburb east of Paris, and passed away there in 1995 at a later age.

As a child she created images of birds, and later she turned to fortune-telliing and homemade tarot cards.

However, she gradually came to feel that the latter practice in particular resulted in all her positive energy being spent on others, so she stopped doing it.

She married and had a son who brought her a small box of matches in 1945.

She would never forget that moment, for it marked the beginning of a hobby that would define the rest of her life in assembling a variety collections. It did not stop at that single matchbox, it grew into a collection of 4,500 items.

The collection comprises a multitude of items, such as matchboxes, beer caps, wine bottle stoppers, telephone dials, lighters, buttons, labels, badges, plastic spoons, crown caps, decorated cushions, and so on.

The images above show parts of Emilienne Chatenet's collection.The top image in particular reveals its artistic character.

We see her standing there in a light-blue Three Kings costume next to a miniature Eiffel Tower constructed from 360 yogurt cups, in a room with cabinets lining the walls that hold collections of all kinds of small decorated dishes and bowls.

It is unclear what happened to the collections after the death of Emillienne Chatenet in 1995

Documentation

*As far as I know, Francis David is the only one who has published photos of Emilienne Chatenet's collections (for example a photo of Emilienne on Instagram).

Emilienne Chatenet

House full of collections

Romainville, dept  Seine-Saint-Denis, region Ile-de-France, France