Maison Cauchie: the studio that advertises itself on its façade

Paul is an architect and decorator. Lina, born Caroline Voet, is a painter and teaches applied arts; they met at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where she was among the first women admitted. Their plot, near the Cinquantenaire, is about six meters wide. They turn it into a business card on the scale of a building.

The program is written on the wall: studios, sgraffito, decorative painting, embroidery, furniture, applied art classes. Passersby don’t have to guess who they are dealing with. Higher up, around a large round window, female figures represent the arts.

All of this is sgraffito: on a plaster made of layers of different colors, the craftsman scratches away in places to reveal his design. It is not a poster stuck on after the fact. The wall, the design, and the colors were conceived together.

The house also surprises by what it lacks. No plant-like curve invades the façade: symmetry, vertical lines, and geometry dominate, in a spirit close to the research being done in Glasgow. In Brussels around 1900, Art Nouveau did not follow a single recipe.

It nearly disappeared, though. After Paul’s death, Lina stays on for years; in 1979, their daughter sells a listed but badly deteriorated house. The new owners undertake a long restoration. A Tintin museum project, considered with Hergé’s agreement, comes to nothing. On the ground floor, decorations hidden for a long time reappear.

Visits begin in 1994. The house can still be visited.