Chantal Royant works glass at the Galerie Casanova in Dinard and opens it for the Savoir-Faire fortnight. The round of forty-five minutes passes glass sculptures, art installations and delicate jewellery. The artist was born at Lanester and carried the Studio Glass movement’s experimental method back to this coast. Her forms answer the sea and the Breton landscapes, and the shifting light of the Breton shore that the material keeps transforming.
Tag: guided-tours
ESAT Les Genêts d’Or opens its workshops, Plabennec
The Établissement et Service d’Accompagnement par le Travail at Plabennec opens its workshops and lets the workers do the talking. The trades shown are groundskeeping, horticulture, printing, brewing and packing. Each is explained by the ESAT workers themselves, who set out their savoir-faire. The jobs are held under adapted conditions by workers with disabilities, and what the visits raise goes to the Fondation du Patrimoine de Bretagne.
Maison Brieuc: the biscuiterie workshops, Yffiniac
Maison Brieuc opens its production workshops at Yffiniac and walks visitors along the route its ingredients take, from raw material to finished product. Pâtissiers, carameliers and confituriers are at work as the group passes. What comes off these lines is the Breton repertoire of palet breton and kouign amann, Confibreizh and spécialités au caramel, worked au beurre salé with sel de Guérande. The visit is offered as a matter of transparency.
Visite guidée de la Maison à Pondalez, Morlaix
The Maison à Pondalez is a timber-framed house of the early sixteenth century, a piece of Morlaix civil architecture. Its plan is the style « à lanterne »: one tall central space open through several floors, a monumental wooden vis staircase, and the suspended walkways, the pondalez, linking the storeys. A guide of the Musée de Morlaix leads the visit through rooms holding its flax collections. The house is classée Monument Historique.
Patat’As: Ploeuc Potato House and Farm Visit
Patat’As is the potato house of Plœuc-L’Hermitage, and the association La Belle du Lié guides visitors through it. Its collection runs to more than 220 heirloom varieties, held as a living conservatory of the crop the commune is known for. The visit then moves to a traditional Plœuc farm that has grown potatoes for several generations, following the tuber from field to plate. It closes back at Patat’As with a tasting of Bret’s.
Les Croc’Archi: the Carnac yacht-club base
Les Croc’Archi is the short-visit format of the Pays d’art et d’histoire Auray Quiberon Terre Atlantique, and it stops here at the Carnac yacht-club’s nautical base. A guide-conferencier of its Culture and Heritage service sets out why it counts: it came with the sports architecture that followed the spread of leisure. The agence Yves Guillou built it, and its sixtieth year is the occasion. The group forms at the little train’s departure point.
L’enceinte carolingienne de Paner, Saint-Tugdual
Guides walk visitors over the Paner enclosure at Saint-Tugdual, where the archaeology service has just closed a second consecutive summer of excavation. What they set out has not been published anywhere: the findings of that season, taken trench by trench. N. Coustet-Larroque and J-P Eludut lead the visit, which leaves from the Place de la mairie. The Carolingian enclosure itself is the subject, and the reading of it is the part that has changed.
AGDE artisan cannery, Plabennec
The AGDE workshop runs a small cannery at Plabennec, the only agri-food project of its kind in Brittany, and its line doubles as a route back into paid work. Visitors follow the jars through the kitchen, sweet and savoury side by side: pâtés, rillettes, jams and prepared meals. The posts on that line are learned by some thirty-five people a year, on the way to a lasting job. A tasting of the jars closes the round, with tea, coffee or apple juice.
Points de vue sur le château de Dinan
The château de Dinan opens for a sensory visit that works on perception instead of chronology. Optical illusions unsettle the eye, hidden places are opened, and exceptional panoramas are reached. Visitors read the château through the eyes of those who crossed it, moving from one point of view to the next. It belongs to Les Minutes Bleues, the Côtes-d’Armor programme that opens the département’s patrimoine in the blue light of dusk.
Science at the Manufacture des tabacs, Morlaix
The Espace des sciences occupies the Manufacture des tabacs in Morlaix, and over the Toussaint break it opens its nine exhibition rooms to all ages. Foucault’s pendulum shows the Earth turning and Globe 360 takes the planet apart. Coup de foudre à la Manu makes static electricity visible. The guided Au plus près des Moulins goes into the Manufacture’s own mills, still working, past a machine classed as a Historic Monument.