The Real Thing

This charming scene is one of the designs by Jean Baptiste HUET who drew many scenes for the original Toile de Jouy factory. He was specially gifted in drawing animals and rustic scenes in a romantic and idealised style. This is dated 1783 - 89 and is only known in red. The toile is named l'Escarpolette (The Swing) with all its romantic associations and also shows a coach and donkey carrying the happy couple away! Several large unused pieces, bright as could be, had been stashed away in the attics of the Chateau de Montesquieu, nr. Bordeaux, and appeared at a country Antique Fair, where I spotted them in a dirty cardboard box.
Funnily enough, the seller told me it was a Beautiran print, (he came from nearby Bordeaux) but when I found it in my book of Jouy patterns, that made it that much more special! Jouy is much sought after and it was good to find even a snippet in good condition. Each little scene could make the centre of a luxurious cushion or chair seat! Would M. Huet approve??

THE LUXURY OF LINEN

All hand embroidery

On my last visit to France I had the luck to purchase the entire contents of a linen room, all from a prosperous bourgeois house where everything was of the best quality. I have now sorted it all out and can offer a lot of extremely good value linens, all clean, pressed and ready for use. Remember that a lot of French 'double' sheets are only just over 6' wide so these are a really good buy if you have a normal English size bed:
Extra long fine weave linen double bed sheets 10' long X 7' and 8'width
some with openwork hemstitching £20 - 25 each
Fine linen initialled double bed sheets with similar borders, extra large £45 each
Finest cotton percale double bed sheets, very large, 4 rows of drawn thread work and reveres
very bright white, £55 each, as new. 2 different pairs large fine linen, superb initials (pics.) £85 each, as new.
About 30 assorted linen double bed sheets, all v.g.c. £25 each various widths and lengths.
Fine lawn baby pillow cases with broderie anglaise borders, £6 each, linen cot sheets, £5 each, tablecloths £15, heavy linen sleeping bag liners,£20, etc.

Large quantity of double, pure linen sheets, many very large over 10' long, seconds, which have professional repairs, (mostly extremely neat double seamed patches along sides), which could have many uses for dyeing, accessory making, cottage curtains, sofa throws, cushions, crafts, already used for film costume and fashion designs. To clear, £10 AND £15 each. Most of this last lot NOW SOLD, BUT THE REST STILL FOR SALE! I have no room for these and would sell them even cheaper as a job lot! 6 odd ones @£5 each!
Email me at dbaer@onetel.com with your phone no. to view in Bradford on Avon, nr. Bath.

SWEET COLOURS are in good taste

Hempolin tea towels

black/white pillow case

sweetie stripes on a grain sack

It was time to re-stock my reserve of rustic hemp, so went off to my supplier, and I had a lovely time rooting through a huge new stock that had just arrived from the furthest parts of Eastern Europe by lorry. I had no idea that the attractive grain sacks in handwoven hemp came in such a vast variation of colour and design. The stripes of colour woven into them were a sort of bar-code for identifying the actual village that the grain came from, so that the empty sacks could be returned to their owners. Most people have seen the common bright red and strong blue stripes, sometimes combined with large cross-stitched initials, known as Hungarian sacks. I have used them for years to cover French easy chairs. Now I was seeing (and buying) a wide variety of coloured stripes and very distinctive weaves, some in very close herringbone patterns, others looser and coarser, no doubt suitable for different crops and seeds that they might contain. Amongst the best were a whole lot in what I can only call toffee, butterscotch and caramel stripes, which with the creamy back ground of basic hemp, were lovely and very subtle in a muted palette. The black and white linen mix was very striking and has the latest contemporary look. I intend to re-cover my own fireside chair with toffee! Will post its portrait when done. You need to choose the closer weaves for chairs in constant use as some are fairly loose-woven and stretch and sag. I am getting very keen on hemp as an eco-friendly material with huge potential and I will keep on encouraging people to use this valuable stuff.

Darn! It's got a hole!

Inevitably, old materials have areas of wear and damage and it is best to do simple neat repairs before washing which will only make matters worse. Holes, if small, can be darned with a strong thread and fine needle, otherwise a neat patch of slightly finer weave makes the best repair. I pin the patch in place, turning the edges under and stitch all round by machine, then turn the work over and snipping four corner cuts into a rectangle shape, turn the damaged edges in and either darn across with a machine or make another neat square in the sheet, machining all round. If there is a split and no fabric missing, I either zig -zag, catching both edges together or machine-darn across the space, using a fine needle in the machine and a normal cotton thread. Some of the old French darns on linen are works of art, they are circular and rather like a cartwheel, the thread is woven round and round in and out of the 'spokes' .

MRS. TICKING

Illustrated first are a nice pile of old tickings, both French and German which I had in vast quantities in the 80s and the portrait was taken in my garden to show them off for an article about the 'new' antiques of the period. The photographer arrived without the usual assistant and had not planned the picture at all. I suggested the iron gazebo already in our old garden and tried to drape the long lengths neatly to make a dome shape - the wind was blowing hard and whipped the ends off the structure and we battled as if in a sailing boat to get the scene under control!
After my climb up a ladder to find and buy a haybarn loft stacked with old tickings, forgotten and neglected by a bedding merchant, I had some very welcome publicity in a couple of decorating magazines. English decorators had newly re-discovered tickings and their bold colours and stripes introduced a fresh look to their 'mood boards' and colour schemes. Americans had always collected and valued tickings as they were amongst the most essential belongings that the early settlers took with them when they travelled across the States and set up home. They filled them with feathers, hay, straw, and corn shucks for bedding. To this day, many people in Pennsylvania and Connecticut display a neat pile of folded tickings as a sign of their ancestry and early beginnings. Many US dealers and designers visited me to buy the most unusual striped colour combinations with a view to getting the copyright and reproducing them - which they did in due course. Ian Mankin found his own designs elsewhere and was part of the ticking resurgence and it all helped my sales. I was very flattered when the photo above showed a pile of tickings from different decorating shops, all of which had come from my own stack! The garden gazebo draped with my tickings caused much amusement in the family who said they had never seen me sitting in the garden till then! The wind was blowing and it was the very devil to anchor all those long strips down for the shoot.

A FLING IN FRANCE

Went to Brittany for a real summer holiday and had a great time on a beautiful estuary at Port
Le Pouldu, simple inexpensive lodging and the best sea food we have had anywhere and we have been to most places. We watched the boats, the sailing classes, the skiers and the swimmers and relaxed completely. However, before this pleasant peacerful interlude we had a very busy two days, first at a big fair at Chartres and the next day at Le Mans - I was looking to top up my linen and hemp sheets and to find chateau length big sets of decent curtains. I found three excellent triple sets from a smart house in Strasburg, next door to an American Embassy, in pale plainish shades with lovely trims, very drawing room (or ballroom if you happen to have one, ) They half -filled my transport, and next day at Le Mans, within the first half hour, I had bought such huge quantities of good linen that I could not fit it all in the van and had to hire some space in another dealer's lorry! Something has happened in the French markets - with no US and UK buyers around, suddenly linen is a drug on the market French dealers just do not deal in old linen! and there were huge quantities available at very modest 'all or nothing' prices. I will be passing on good stuff at much lower prices as soon as it is all washed, ironed and labelled (about two weeks' time). And if you want splendid rich curtains at really good crunchy prices, do get in touch - I now have a choice of 20 different sets, all over 10ft drop, in every colour.

New friends - old dreams

A sample card of linen tapes for apron ties and a colourful ticking used for feather beds

Since posting my website, which took me several days to compose with a lot of help from friends, I have embarked on this Blogsite and apart from some good business, it has put me in touch with many new contacts all over the world. I try not to make it a complete chat item, and to pass on a little lore on textiles, and a modest account of the old ways of rustic French life as told to me by the old traditional brocanteurs who have memories of Old France and are glad to have a keen listener to their tales. Many of my new friends overseas have been to France and have wonderful memories too, of armoires stacked with folded linen and bunches of lavender to make it sweet-smelling, of rough old fruitwood tables covered in snow-white linen cloths and laden with delicious local food, vegetables and fruit and jugs of wine or cider, cold from the cellars, I think they might find a lot of this magic gone, but would have to remember that life was very hard for many, that electricity, gas and drainage came very late to many rural areas, just before the last war. The peasant women in Northern France and Brittany wore heavy black cotton overall dresses and did all the household chores wearing a strong work apron, changing to a dressy one for going out. They lived in dark beamed kitchens with tiled floors and brown furniture so it is not surprising that they cheered the place, and themselves, up with bright checked curtains, frilly nets and creamy linen embroidered trims on all the shelves, mantelpieces and pelmets, and they collected bright china with lustre decoration to reflect the fire and window lights.

FLOWERS, FLASHES AND SHOOTS

Gabi Tubbs, journalist and friend, who first wrote about my tickings 20 years ago in Country Living, was here today for a magazine feature with a young photographer, Jody Stewart. He is the son of another old friend, Gloria Stewart, who has done up lots of grand old houses in the Dordogne and is an antiques consultant for Judith Miller of the Miller antiques reference books. So it was a happy reunion and Gabi worked hard for two whole days fixing everything just so. Flowers had to be placed in strategic positions, ornaments tweaked into empty spaces and the lamps adjusted for light and shadow. Peering through the lens of high tech. small cameras, everything was vetted before 'shooting' and it was hard work for the pair of them to get round their chosen spots. I thought it was wonderful that the very experienced Gabi who has worked with many top photo people, was sharing her expertise with a younger specialist, and no doubt, he, too, will make the most of these opportunities - getting into good magazines is very difficult now that they are drawing in their horns and preferring to use 'in-house' staff, all for economy. Gloria will be here at my home in Bradford on Avon with a collection of fine brocante at our July 9th /10th Fair here. Apply for invites to me via dbaer@onetel.com with your full address please. gabitubbs@aol.com Jody 07964 553229