The Gallic Hotel in Dinard: INTERIORS (2)

Dining room

This large room originally stood on the left of the glass gallery on the ground floor which connected the main lobby to the garden. It was preceded by the kitchen, which extended up to the inside court. The decoration is characterized by a strong polychrome probably base of blue, orange, and green on a beige background, consisting of floral motifs and draperies stencilled. Columns, covered with staff, concealed the supporting structures of the building. The upper part of the walls, lined with wood paneling typically Art Deco motifs, included decorative panels with paintings of remarkable sites in Britanny.

View of the dining room
(private collection)

Actual view of one of the paintings ( "Vitré")
of the dining room

(service of heritage city of Dinard)

Piece of stencil painting from a corridor

The floor consisted of a coating of vitrified red cement and it still can be seen in the buiding corridors. One of the side effect of this coating, even though very aesthetic, is its soundness and it’s lack of heat. Thus it necessitated the presence of heaters under tables as it is shown on photographs taken at the time of the opening.

Electric lighting was provided by the lamps in a shape of a ring put on the numerous columns. The installation of chandeliers was not possible due to the lack of any structure in the ceilings. The same type of lamp was set at regular intervals between each window and each door. Electric lamp in Louis XVI style, probably made of plated silver, were placed on the tables. This was made to soften the harsh light from all the other light sources. The use of red or pink pleated silk lamp shades brought a note a bit outdated but very "British" in such a modern surrounding.

View of the dining room
(service of heritage city of de Dinard)

The furniture was typical of most of the luxury hotels of the time. The bentwood chairs, in a mahogany color, came from “Fischel & son” (model 196 .1 / 2 Catalog Fischel). This company also provided other models of chairs for the hotel, especially those for the bar covered in brown moleskin with studded edge. Serving tables were used to divide the dining room into different areas.

Chair from Fischel&Son model 196.1/2
from the dining room
(private collection)

Silverware designed by Christofle were used, especially a model called "Berain" with a shell motif, along with a flatware model called "Vulcan". This model was created in 1926 by Luc Lanel for the SS "Ile de France" of the Cie Générale Transatlantique (known as French Line). The plates were made of white china and had on the edge a golden monogram "GH" for "Gallic Hotel" on a blue background with a surrounding of golden pearl.

Wine coasters, in silver plated metal
designed by Christofle company
(private collection)

Vegetable dish in silver plated metal
designed by Christofle company
(private collection)

Cutlery in silver plated metal
designed by Christofle company
called "bérain"
(private collection)

China plate
with the monogram of the hotel
(private collection)

Round dish in silver plated metal
designed by Christofle comapny
called "Vulcain"
(private collection)

The design in its whole was more related to the aesthetics of the late teens and the first part of the twenties. Such floral design in bright colors was not without recalling the decoration of frescoes of the ancient Babylonian palace and the Oriental costumes of the Diaguilev’s Russian Ballets that had so much impressed the time before WW1.

In 1927, when the hotel opened, this type of decoration has had its climaxs in 1925 at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, exhibition that counted Marcel Oudin among its contributors.

It contrasted in any case with the modern exterior of the hotel and the design of the main lobby announcing the next decorative period where some form of “nakedness” banning color and encouraging shape, that would later become the rule.

The cuisine of the "Gallic Hotel" would, during its first season, become one of the most famous in Dinard and gained a star in the 1935 edition of the Michelin guide. But at that time, the hotels remained enclosed places where guests stayed for a long period of time living a way of life that was similar to that of a private residence. And thus the habit of dinning out at hotel restaurant was very scarce.

Because of the success that had the table during its first summer season, according to local newspapers, getting a table at the "Gallic Hotel" is worth a long wait, during winter of 1927-1928, the dining room is completed with a rotunda used as a restaurant. The construction of the latter will lead to significant changes in the ground floor.

The facade will be retained. And the dining room, whose doors once opened on a terrace, now opened directly in the restaurant inside the rotunda. The light was brought inside the building by two levels of glass tiered roof on the rotunda and then through large windows above the doors of the old facade now inside the building.

The restaurant area thus played the role of a sort of winter garden or a large bow window opened to the sea added to the dining room. The dining room, then retained its "formal" character with its rich decor and the restaurant, probably without any particular décor, because of its many windows, would have a more "outdoor" atmosphere. The old pictures also show that some of the tables in the restaurant could even have been set up outside under the awning of the rotunda, which undoubtedly explains the beautiful tile floor which is still there.

Tile floor of the rotunda

The construction of the rotunda is probably not only related to the gastronomic success of the cuisine at the hotel as written by contemporaries. It also marks a change in the seaside lifestyle. In fact, until WWI, seaside lifestyle was a transposition of aristocratic and bourgeois lifestyles in cities or castles that was mostly cast inside. The sea and the beach were then only considered as a landscape to be contemplated without any or very few contact with them. In the 1920’s, a new lifestyle appeared, turned towards the beach, which became its location. This is the birth of an outdoor life we still have today. The restaurant in the rotunda at the "Gallic Hotel" seems to fulfill this need.