Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron from the Musée le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen

The Le Secq collection is the most important holding of wrought iron in the world, combining artistic virtuosity, technological innovation, and whimsy. It was created by Jean-Louis Henri Le Secq Destournelles (1818-1882) and his son Henri-Jean Le Secq des Tournelles (1854-1925). The older Le Secq focused on masterpieces-exceptional objects. The younger Le Secq inherited his father's enthusiasm and assembled an encyclopedic array of adornments, instruments, and tools, which he catalogued like natural history specimens. He gave the collection to the city of Rouen, where it has been spectacularly displayed in the deconsecrated church of Saint-Laurent since 1921. This catalogue covers some 150 of the most magnificent objects in the Le Secq collection, classed in ten categories-including locks and keys, decorative plaques, and everyday objects-with essays on the history of the Le Secq collection and on the place of metalwork in the Barnes Foundation.