We have left Bandol to escape the heat of August.
La Melonne has been rented out to holidaymakers so we’re out on our ear.
This week we’re staying in the Drôme region at Château Saint-Ferréol.
A Dying Art
In Die, at the weekly market, happenstance led me to Alain Latin. This gentleman is a maker and repairer of chair seats. Traditionally, seats can be woven from a variety of materials, including natural bulrush, cattails, paper fibre, cane webbing, strand cane, Danish cord, rawhide, oak, ash and hickory bark splints.
At the market, alas, we had limited time and a crying baby. The only question I could ask Alain was the cost of his services. For paille de marais or seats made from swamp straw or bulrush it was €60, and for paille de seigle or seats made from rye straw it was €75.
Alain’s only tools were his hands and the three pieces of wood resting on the chair in the above photo. I watched as Alain took a piece of straw with his right hand and weaved it into the existing material, tucking and tightening with the wood pieces as he went.
Our French friends could not understand my fascination with Alain. I explained that New Zealand has very few if any of these old world trades, although in Australia, we have the Lost Trades Fair.
For more information on the art of seat weaving read this interview with Cathryn Peters.
Here in San Francisco there's an old Russian man who does similar work and I've brought many a chair to his garage workshop over the years. He's a trained engineer who left the Soviet Union in the 80s and struggled to find work in his field without American qualifications. So he turned his hand to furniture repair and has thrived. He always has work and was able to buy a home that's much nicer than mine.