Rendez-vous à Ribérac: Of knives and men

The extra hour in bed this morning was very welcome, so it was in pleasant sunshine that I hauled out my trusty Santa Cruz fabricated piece of steel and cycled down to our local boulangerie for my daily dose of ‘baguette tradition’. Upon arrival I noticed the queue coiled around the interior patiently waiting in line. I think people were planning ahead and buying with the Toussaint Bank Holiday of tomorrow in mind.

At this time of year one sees chrysanths sprouting on every street corner and the supermarkets quite often have polytunnels of the things ranged in their car parks. Are they all grown in Kenya and flown in for this festival or has French protectionism managed to keep the production ‘in house’ so to speak?

Eventually clutching my prize of a warm baguette I loaded my rucksack and returned home to be greeted by one of Lesley’s famous Sunday brunches, ham omelette, sautéed potatoes, baked beans, tomatoes and of course accompanied by the baguette and lashings of freshly ground coffee.

The scenic route

Suitably fortified we headed off north to visit Nontron and its ‘Rue de Metiers d’Art’ which was being held over the weekend. Now you have to understand that knives are big round these parts, both literally and physically. The famous Nontron knife, France’s first and oldest knife (from 1653) is hand fashioned from forged steel with its handle made from local boxwood and then decorated with a wood burnt figure like an upside down horseshoe. Each knife is made from start to finish by one person in the artisanal way. They come in all shapes and sizes.

Some of Nontron's finest

French coutellerie is to be taken very seriously indeed. The knives on display at the expo were both exquisite and beautiful and marks of true craftsmanship, but one does wonder exactly what people do with these things; some are truly scary and would make Rambo quiver. Maybe they are used in order to ward off irate sangliers, a bit of light butchery ‘dans le fôret’ or just to open your mail from the local Hôtel des Impots.

The scale and talent of the artisans was astonishing. Many of the ceramists and enamellists have been trained in Limoges and it gave a nice warm feeling to see these skills flowering in this way. A good example of somebody using enamel on copper was Muriel Carcagno. Her work is exquisite and she proudly showed me pieces of her work which showed the use of copper which she had fused to the underside of the lids of her pots. It also struck me that like dog owners resembling their pets, a lot of the artisans resembled their pieces of work. Some, like Muriel, who, displaying her Italian roots was wearing red. This seemed to reflect her work and one could imagine her hard at it in her atelier, furnace ablaze, clad in overalls and wearing goggles!