Paris Gas - Expo Paris 1925
Nowadays, gas plays a considerable role in domestic life.
The Société du Gaz de Paris wanted to convince the general public that its use can easily be adapted to all the requirements of modern decoration. To this end, it had built a pavilion at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs with sober, geometric lines evoking the factory that produces the precious fuel, and had brought together there the latest models and installations from appliance manufacturers. This presentation was a great success.
Gas has undeniable primordial qualities: cleanliness, flexibility and speed of use. All the services required of it can always be provided by means of equipment that is not only elegant when desirable, but in all circumstances extremely small.
This feature is particularly valuable in Paris, where the smallness of living quarters is well known. For Parisian kitchens, the Société du Gaz de Paris has therefore created and rented a unit consisting of a stove and an oven that allows all the most important cooking operations to be carried out with the minimum of space.
It is not only in the average household that gas cooking is king; private mansions and large bourgeois flats have also adopted it.
It was a pleasure to see, in the Society's pavilion, the beautiful models of enamelled appliances bringing together under the hand of the cook or chef all the elements essential to the exercise of their art: open hearth, hot plate, roasting oven, pastry oven, grill, braising pan, salamander, proverb, etc. This complexity of various services does not exclude the simplicity of the mechanism, all the fires being controlled by a set of taps which constitute a real virtuoso keyboard in the hand of the master chef.
The kitchen with this magnificent modern equipment remains the immaculate laboratory par excellence. In addition, gas, which ensures the perfect cooking of the most refined foods, allows with the same ease the secondary tasks such as the production of hot water, the cleaning of the dishes, the washing of clothes, the ironing.
In the field of flat heating, gas has made it possible to achieve significant improvements. The stands of the Société du Gaz de Paris pavilion showed a wide range of fireplace appliances, matching all the styles of furnishings currently in vogue and allowing the composition of absolutely harmonious interiors with the addition of chandeliers and gas wall lamps with pure lines and soft lights.
In the field of central heating, considerable progress has been made. Gas central heating makes it possible to heat each flat individually. Each tenant can adjust the temperature of the rooms he lives in as he wishes. In addition, the gas boiler automatically increases or decreases its output according to all variations in the outside temperature by means of an appropriate regulator.
In the Gas Company's pavilion, many models of boilers were on display. Everyone noticed how much care the manufacturers had taken in the installation of these appliances to ensure that they could be placed in the anterooms or vestibules, as well as in the kitchens. The same search for aesthetics has been extended to the hot water pipes connecting the boiler to the radiators. Thin, attractive copper tubes now replace the old iron pipes to great advantage.
Numerous appliance manufacturers had responded to the invitation extended to them by the Société du Gaz de Paris to exhibit their creations alongside its own on its stands.
The limited space at our disposal does not allow us to define them all. But it is essential to mention a few.
We greatly admired the salon furnished by Saddier and his sons, 31, rue des Boulets, in Paris, and the lighting by incandescent candles of Raymond fils, 22, rue de la Folie-Méricourt. This beautiful ensemble was completed by the "F Opale" gas radiator, from the Arthur Martin foundries, 18, rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi.
The bathroom of Maury frères, 25, rue Godefroy-Cavaignac, in Paris, was no less appreciated by the visitors, and more than one housewife paused for a long time in front of the small Parisian kitchen exhibited by the Société du Gaz de Paris and bringing together an oven, a six-burner stove and a sober ceiling light, all appliances that can be obtained even on hire.
But the kitchen of a large bourgeois house has obtained a particular success of curiosity. It included a gas-only cooker from Établissements Charles Pelletier, 10, rue du Cambodge, in Paris, and a gas-heated "Lavor" washing machine built by Grandmougin et fils, 9, rue Le Regrattier.
In the adjoining office, the practical lighting with straight spouts with reversed sleeves, an installation of the Société du Gaz de Paris, also rented on request, and the "Frigorette", a machine for making ice by gas heating, created by the Société Le Frigor, 22 bis, rue de Silly, in Boulogne-sur-Seine, were very much noticed.
The most remarkable gas central heating appliances were the Phi-Radia gas boiler, from the French company Chaleur et Lumière, 22, rue Drouot, in Paris, and the creation of Etablissements Grouard frères, 6, rue Morand, in Paris, for heating by the A. M.
Inside the pavilion of the Société du Gaz de Paris is an eloquent phrase: "Gas fights against the high cost of living:
GAS FIGHTS AGAINST HIGH LIVING COSTS, SOLVES THE CRISIS OF THE SERVANTS BY FACILITATING THEIR WORK AND CONTRIBUTES TO MODERN COMFORT BY ADAPTING TO ALL NEEDS. IT IS THE INDISPENSABLE AUXILIARY OF DAILY LIFE, RESPONDING INSTANTLY TO EVERYONE'S CALL BY GIVING THEM LIGHT AND HEAT AT ALL TIMES.
The public hardly needs this terse warning. For the vogue for gas is still growing. In particular, more and more people are adopting gas central heating. The number of boilers installed in Paris at the end of 1924 was close to 500; it is constantly increasing, and the interest shown by the many visitors to the pavilion points to a rapid expansion of this ideal form of heating.
©L’Illustration - 1925