Museum of Decorative Arts of faience and fashion – Borély Castle
The castle
Château Borély is a listed historical monument and former archeological museum and was substantially renovated in 2013. Built in the 1760s and 1770s, the Bastide Borély stands out for the elegant posterity of its façade and the quality of its interior decor. Entrusted to the painter Louis Chaix frequented in the summer, the most beautiful of the bastides as it was designated from its construction, was a country house where the Borély family enjoyed receiving their relations and friends in an exceptional setting between the mayor and the Hill.
The museum
Today, the Château Borély, a museum of decorative arts of faience and fashion, presents to the public a selection of 2,500 works of great technical diversity. In the fields of furniture, ceramics, glass, tapestries and art objects from the 18th century to the present day.
The 18th century ceramics are very widely represented in the museum’s rooms with the large Provencal (Moustiers) and Marseillaises factories (Joseph Fauchier, Veuve Perrin, Honoré Savy, Gaspard Robert, Antoine Bonnefoy).
With a classic exterior design, the Bastide has an elaborate and sophisticated interior decor. Created under the direction of Louis-Joseph Denis Borély, Painted decor, gypseries, gilded wood, marble marquetry everything seems to have been done to dazzle the guests of the Borély family.
Complemented by an exceptional fashion background and accessories, these collections are gathered on nearly 1600 m2 of exhibitions and presented in the heart of a resolutely contemporary museography. Throughout the journey in which some of the original real estate decorations have been preserved and through large decorative blocks, contemporary works specially created for the museum, such as the chandelier in the grand vestibule and the reception bank, are inserted, created by the designers Mathieu Lehanner and Benjamin Grindorge.