Le Savon Breton opens its workshop at Saint-Brieuc-des-Iffs so that visitors come away hard to catch out on soap. The route runs through the laboratoire, the ingrédients and the méthode de fabrication, which here is saponification à froid. The savonnerie is an entreprise artisanale of the Bretagne romantique and works only with ingredients it selects itself. The boutique opens at the end of the visit.
Tag: traditional-crafts
Solidus Liquidus: Nicolas Desverronnières at L’aparté
L’aparté, the contemporary art centre beside the lac de Trémelin, shows what came of a residency by Nicolas Desverronnières. He cuts wood in taille directe, sculpts bas-reliefs, lays installations on the floor and draws with charcoal powder on panels. The work takes hold of the building’s exterior cladding, so each piece is read against the architecture. Its matter is the natural patrimoine of the lake and the artisanal savoir-faire around it.
Quimperlé Les Rias opens its workshops
Fifteen or so firms of the Quimperlé Les Rias destination take visitors behind their own doors. Breweries, a paper mill, a distillery, artisan studios and specialist companies are among them, so craft, farming and industry sit side by side. Forty-four tourist offices across Brittany stand behind the fortnight. Quimperlé’s own share turns on food production and the métiers d’art.
Galerie Casanova, Chantal Royant’s glass
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.
Cendrea Nature: wood-ash laundry soap, Saint-Pabu
Cendrea Nature needs only two things to make its cleaning products: wood ash and rainwater. Bruno Lecoeur brought back the ecological, Finistère-made laundry soap his forebears washed with, and sells it under that name. The visit explains the method and then hands it over, with an initiation to making laundry soap from wood ash. The session is open from fourteen years up, and the takings go to the Fondation du Patrimoine de Bretagne.
Handloom weaving at L’Échoppée Belle, Pontivy
L’Échoppée Belle is a shop run by the makers who stock it, and for this round one of them sets up her loom among them. Anne Grolleau works the handloom in front of visitors and spins wool as she explains how the frame is threaded. She names the textile fibres she uses, says where each comes from, and gives the names of the different cloths. Weaving on a hand frame is one of the oldest trades practised by the Breton artisans who share the shop.
Pointe de Sel: fish leather at a Paimpol atelier
Pointe de Sel works leather drawn from the sea, and for this visit it opens the small atelier-boutique it keeps in the port of Paimpol. The artisans lay out the materials, the tools and each stage of making, then talk through what they are doing. The unusual part is the hide itself: fish skin, whose particular demands the workshop explains as it works. Two people must book for a visit to run, and the rooms take callers with disabilities.
La brosserie d’Art Léonard à Saint-Brieuc
The Léonard workshop at Saint-Brieuc assembles fine brushes for the beaux-arts trade and the big cosmetics houses. It has stayed in the same family for seven generations, and the visit follows that assembly step by step. Saint-Brieuc has been a brushmaking town for over a century: Raphael, Isabey and Léonard, in the Sauer group, are the last three fine-brush names in France. The know-how carries the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label.
Visite de l’atelier de costumes bretons Damm Veur
Damm Veur is the workshop of Mickaël, who makes and restores traditional Breton costume at Noyal-Pontivy. He works à l’ancienne: the seams are sewn by hand, and an old machine still turns beside him. The cloth he uses is antique or modern, chosen for what a given costume needs. The visit is to the bench itself, with the maker at work on it, not a finished garment behind glass.
AP Sellerie, an Upholstery Workshop at Auray
François Lamiot has run AP Sellerie since it began, keeping close ties across a wide network of boating professionals. The firm started as a subsidiary of All Purpose, the Trinité-sur-Mer sailmaker, and later took its independence to become Brittany’s largest artisanal upholstery workshop. The visit goes behind the benches of the Toul Garros workshop at Auray. The premises are not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility.