Saving a Stone Stag

On a recent visit to the Chateau Royal d'Amboise I encountered a young stone conservator busy working on the limestone stag's head from the frieze over the door of the Chapel of Saint Hubert.

It takes a lot of concentration...

She was carefully removing a layer of plaster from part of the stag's head with a dental drill. She explained to us that the plaster was a 19C repair, to join the face of the stag on to the back of the head. At some time in the 19th century a pair of metal antlers were inserted into the head too. Both these materials were guaranteed to give future problems because they react badly with the limestone. As part of the current major restoration of the Chapel she was tasked with sorting it out a hundred years later.

 

This is the type of material being removed from the old join...

I asked her how she was going to reinsert the antlers. She told me that the head would be glued back together and the antlers would be sunk into a pocket of resin. The new materials will not react with the old so there shouldn't be any more damage caused by rusting metal.

 

The pieces go back together like this...

A Gobelins Tapestry

By far the most famous of the French tapestry weaving workshops is Gobelins. Originally, in the mid 15th century, Gobelins was not a weaving manufacturer but a family of textile dyers who set up an establishment in what is now the 13th arrondissement of Paris. In the early 17th century Henri IV moved a team of Flemish tapestry weavers in and 1662 Jean-Baptiste Colbert bought the place on behalf of his royal master Louis XIV.

Colbert transformed the workshops into a multidisciplined affair, housing every possible trade required for making ornate highly decorated furniture for royal residences and gifts. After 30 years the money ran out and after a brief closure the factory reverted to just making tapestries.

In effect the factory still exists, as the state run Mobiliers national (part of the Manufacture nationale network) which showcases the French heritage of decorative arts and trades, provides training for weavers and conservators and perhaps most important of all, is one of the few places you can send a tapestry for cleaning and repair.

The Gobelins tapestry above hangs in the Arms Room at Cheverny and depicts the kidnapping of Helen by Paris. Apparently it has never been restored, so it is certainly a remarkable survival and a credit to the diligent collections care the family and staff undertake. Normally tapestries require considerable conservation work to ensure that aged fibres weakened by exposure to light do not simply tear themselves apart due to the tapestry's own weight.

Although this tapestry shows the typical overall yellowing that is the visible clue that the fibres are degrading, the dye colours have proved quite robust. All the dyes used in tapestries up until the mid 19th century are made from naturally occuring substances - mostly plant based, like indigo, but occasionally animal based, such as coccinelle. These dyes vary considerably in their fastness, and their effect on the wool threads they colour. The various mordants used to fix the dye can affect the lifespan of the weft differently too. Some colours stay bright and the fibre strong, others fade or rot very quickly.

Gobelins perfected hundreds of dyes, but one of the reasons tapestries often have a blue caste is because there was no good natural leaf or grass green. Bright greens were produced by overdying blue and yellow. The yellow vegetable dyes were not particularly lightfast, and soon faded. The blue however, was indigo, and very persistant. The more foliage in a tapestry, the bluer it looks today.

Because of the 'stop - start' way tapestries are woven each colour forms a discrete unit. The slits between the colours are hand stitched together, but if this stitching fails the tapestry develops 'fault lines'. Tapestries are tremendously heavy and any weak areas tend to just rip apart because of the stresses. Workshops like the modern Gobelins have the facilities to take these huge objects and consolidate the fragile textiles so they can be enjoyed on chateaux walls for another generation.

Cheats Confit de Canard

Traditional confit de canard (slow cooked duck) requires large quantities of duck fat. Although you can reuse the fat because it hasn't been heated up very much, I find it is far more than I would normally use and it tends to just go off in the fridge before I get to it. I've also on one occasion had a disaster where the liquid fat overflowed on our wood stove, ruining a rug and causing a fire hazard. So for many years I have used Sally Schneider's 'revisionist' technique, where the duck is cured overnight in the traditional way to reduce moisture and impart flavour, but is then cooked in its own juices, sealed in a foil parcel in a low oven for two hours. The flavour and texture is very similar and I don't have all that fat to deal with.

Curing Ingredients
2 tbsp coarse salt
10 juniper berries
1 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
3/4 tsp dried thyme
A bay leaf
6 allspice berries
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp dried garlic flakes
1 tsp eau de vie

Method

1. Grind all the dry ingredients of the curing mix in a mortar and pestle. 
2. Rub the duck legs with eau de vie, then with the curing mix. You will need a tablespoon of curing mix for every 500 g of duck legs. The eau de vie will help dry the skin out, and it is a technique you can use for enhancing the flavour of any poultry (very useful for turning industrially farmed chicken into something more savoury and farmhouse).
3. Leave to cure overnight in the fridge (can be left for longer).
4. Heat the oven to 150C.
5. Pat the duck legs dry with kitchen paper towel and prick the skin in a number of places.
6. Arrange the duck legs on one half of a long piece of foil, fold over the other half and fold the edges to seal.
7. Put the parcel on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 2 hours.
8. Take the duck out of the foil. You can use the duck immediately or store in the fridge or freezer for later.

I tend to make in batches so some is eaten immediately and some frozen. One batch of curing mix will do 4 - 6 duck legs. 

Duck legs are one of the by-products of foie gras production and are often very reasonably priced.

I harvested the juniper berries for the curing mix from wild juniper growing locally on the hillsides here.

Lac de Gaube

Lac de Gaube is a French Pyrenean lake near Cauterets in the Hautes-Pyrénées, within the Pyrenees National Park. The name is a tautology, as 'gaube' is a Gascon word for 'lake' and 'lac' is the French word for 'lake'. It comes from the same pre-Celtic Eurasian root as 'gaves', which is the local Pyrenean word for the mountain streams.

The lake is at an altitude of 1725 metres above sea level, ovoid in shape, on a north-south axis. It sits in a small valley about 9 kilometres long, which starts at the foot of Mount Vignemale (3298 metres) and ends at the Pont d'Espagne. 

It is fed by the Gave des Oulettes de Gaube, which in turn is fed by the glacier on Mount Vignemale. At its deepest it is 40 metres to the bottom of the lake, and the surrounding slopes are covered in rock falls and landslides.

Reached by hiking a couple of hours uphill through the pines or by taking the cable car from Pont d'Espagne then the ski lift and walking a mere half an hour downhill through alpine meadows, the lake is famous for its fabulous views and ease of access. In addition, it is the departure point for several longer hiking trails. For example, go along the western bank on the GR10 (one of France's famous long distance hiking trails) and you can reach the Refuge des Oulettes de Gaube at 2151 metres.

Once you get there, you can have lunch at the restaurant overlooking the lake, which serves a set menu for a very reasonable price. We have been here twice over the years for lunch, taking the cable car up and walking down, and last year we did the longer walk to and from Oulettes.

Why are French Farm Carts Blue?

Traditionally in the Touraine, and in some other parts of France, horsedrawn carts were painted blue. There are several posited reasons [Source Au temps de Chaumussay by Michel Brouard]:

• the base pigments used for the paint were Prussian blue and barium sulphate, a mixture known as bleu charron. The residue from the manufacture of the blue plant dyestuff guède or pastel (woad/indigo) was also added, and the concoction was an excellent insecticide.
• the blue repulsed flies, which taking the colour for the sky, didn't land on the cart.
• it's the best choice of colour for the job. Red was too agressive, green would mean the vehicles disappeared in the vegetation, yellow was too loud, black was morbid, white was pretentious and got dirty too easily.

I've heard a similar story about kitchens and pantries in the 19th century being painted blue, because it was believed to be a colour that discouraged flies. The colour is known as dipteran blue in English as a result. In France this colour blue is known as bleu charrette (cart blue). Recently one of the colourless compounds in the complex chemical cocktail that is indigo dyestuff has been demonstrated to have some insecticidal properties. However, personally I don't believe the colour of the cart would discourage a fly attracted by a cart full of muck. Nor do I believe that woad/indigo would kill wood boring insects (or that carts were in any danger from such creatures). I think the last explanation, prosaic as it sounds, is the most likely.

Walking Around Preuilly sur Claise

On Wednesday 13 September I joined Joel, Denise and Helene to do a 10 kilometre walk around Preuilly sur Claise, taking 2 hours. It was simultaneously very sweaty and quite foggy.

The municipality of Preuilly sur Claise has installed a nice shelter with toilets, maps, photos, picnic tables and bike repair station alongside the greenway (Fr. voie verte) at the old train station.

Albert Einstein on a chopper bike, street art by Olivier, along the greenway.

The fruits on this Prunus sp made me think it was a hybrid between a sloe and another plum species. The fruits were larger than sloes, but much smaller than a plum, quite sweet and tasty, with only a hint at the end of the sloe astringency.

Le Paradis in the fog.

Peucedanum cervaria (syn Cervaria rivini) (Fr. le Peucedan Herbes aux cerfs), which grows on hot calcareous clay sites and flowers in the autumn. Related to carrots and parsley.

An abandoned Citroen H Van.

A dairy farmer spreading slurry on a field. None of us had ever seen this before. The pipe from the slurry pit must have been well over 100 m long and snaked all over the field behind the tractor.

A pack of hounds, including some Porcelaines, a breed I find very attractive and I was once sorely tempted to take a gunshy rescue bitch.

The hamlet of La Parentiere.

Rural track.

Wild Service Tree Sorbus torminalis (Fr. Alisier torminal).