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Wednesday 24 February 2010

A Confession - I Have Been Away for 3 Weeks!

I know some of you think that I work all time - and I do when I am here in the UK. Then every so often I take a holiday when I do no real work at all. Maybe climb a mountain or fly a kite, visit museums and a few favourite shops. I have to confess that I have just returned from 3 weeks in France. It has been lovely! The sky was cobalt, the sea turquoise and when it snowed, it snowed white pom-poms.
One of my favourite places is Tarascon on the Rhone, opposite its twin, Beaucaire, the highest navigable point of the Rhone and site of an important mediaeval international market place. It is also home to Souleiado, makers of the colourful printed cloths we associate with Provence, and their museum which is rich in costume and furnishing history.

Cotton from India printed with woodblocks similar to these was imported via Marseille in the 17th century and was shipped up to Beaucaire. These fabulous fabrics, still called Indiennes today, were so popular for dresses and furnishings, that production grew up around Tarascon. However, the French crown seeing that the new fashion prejudiced crown sponsored textile manufacturing, banned their production. The interdiction was largely flouted and manufacture moved out of France to the then independent state of Alsace, to Mulhouse on the Rhine. The Souleiado Museum in Tarascon has around 20,000 antique wood blocks in its collection.
Before roller presses, the fabrics were printed by hand.

One of the features of the museum is the dye-house, which still houses the original dye recipes for all the fabrics produced.

This is just so you can see how blue the sky was by Alphonse Daudet's Moulin just south of Tarascon.

6 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for sharing. Feels almost like I had a holiday. (Not a three week one, maybe three minutes.)

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  2. How lovely Jacqueline and good to hear you took a long break, but still keeping up your blog!! Admirable.

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  3. How wonderful, you visited some of my favorite places ! I recognize the quilts hanging on the wall of the museum. A break of 3 weeks sounds like utter bliss,
    regards from FL

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  4. How beautiful. It makes me want to go apply for a passport. I loved going to France the 2 times I went when I was 15 and 18. Wish I would have known about these kind of places then but I didn't have that free of an agenda. Guess I will have to go back someday.
    Thanks for giving me such a great place to add to my trip agenda in the future.

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  5. I have just spent the past half hour getting caught up on the 20 or so posts you've written in the last few weeks -- in order to get my work done, I cannot read blogs as much as I'd like...

    But I have to tell you how incredibly grateful I am to you for your beautiful blog!!! I love the depth and breadth of your posts...you do such a wonderful job of culling through auction listings, museum collections and then craft the most lovely posts. They all make my heart sing. I just needed to let you know. A wonderful, fabulous and beautiful blog...I can only imagine that you are the same.

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  6. I visited Tarascon and Souleiado last summer. I loved it.
    Thank you for the historical input

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