Ice and knives
Nov. 20th, 2007 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe'd planned to spend a day or so in the Aubrac, and walk in those hills: but we weren't planning on any winter sports, so one look at the snow lying, not thickly but definitely lying, decided us to head south, if we could. Not being completely crazy, we asked what the roads were like: they're good, said the hotelier, no problems, no, none at all...
This was true in the sense that the pass was open, but it was an interesting drive: up into cloud, with enoough wind to pick up the fallen snow and drift it across in front of us, packed snow on the roadway that was only just not ice...
It was a relief when we came down into Laguiole. We'd seen a poster at the hotel advertising visits to the "coutellerie", the knife factory, and it seemed like an entertaining diversion for a snowy day. I had hazy memories from our first visit to the region, that the manufacture of knives in the traditional style had recently been revived - in Espalion, I think, (that is, in another town nearby) where we had seen very covetable knives at extreme prices, and I thought I'd heard since that the business was thriving and had been transferred to Thiers (larger town, not so nearby, traditional centre for cutlery and other such metalwork). Since then knives with the name "Laguiole" on the blade, and the little bee on the back, had started appearing quite cheaply (at T.K. Maxx, in fact): perhaps we could find out what was going on.
We ended up visiting two knife factories, and could have visited more. The Forge de Laguiole - the one with the factory designed by Philippe Starck - had a large showroom, and a workshop behind it which the public were invited to wander around. We were lucky, it seemed, to have turned up on the day of the week when a shipment of blanks arrived and were stamped out as blades - but we deduced this from the posters around the wall, it was a free and unguided visit. Another poster implied that this was the firm which had relaunched the manufacture of the traditional style of knives, in 1987.
Across the way was another Coutellerie, and if the first had been too frugal with the information, this one erred on the other side. We were ushered into a room with raked seating like a little theatre, and lectured for 40 minutes. This answered all my questions (the problem seems to be that the village of Laguiole - pronounced, incidentally, "Lie-ole" - gained a reputation for its knives well before there was any system of trademarking. The name had passed into general use, and could not now be reclaimed) and many more, in a piece of performance which would have been skillful if it had known where to stop. We were then ushered into the workshop, and allowed to watch a selected employee grinding and polishing a bone handle to the required shape and finish. We left muttering about Health and Safety.
And drove south, out of the snow.
Mazamet has flower beds in the form of cyclists, their bicycles made of white tubing of some kind - and graffiti reading "Libérez José Bové". This was the highlight of the drive east along the foothills of the Montagne Noire, but the route south through the mountains themselves was stunning - and the town of Minerve even more so.
This was true in the sense that the pass was open, but it was an interesting drive: up into cloud, with enoough wind to pick up the fallen snow and drift it across in front of us, packed snow on the roadway that was only just not ice...
It was a relief when we came down into Laguiole. We'd seen a poster at the hotel advertising visits to the "coutellerie", the knife factory, and it seemed like an entertaining diversion for a snowy day. I had hazy memories from our first visit to the region, that the manufacture of knives in the traditional style had recently been revived - in Espalion, I think, (that is, in another town nearby) where we had seen very covetable knives at extreme prices, and I thought I'd heard since that the business was thriving and had been transferred to Thiers (larger town, not so nearby, traditional centre for cutlery and other such metalwork). Since then knives with the name "Laguiole" on the blade, and the little bee on the back, had started appearing quite cheaply (at T.K. Maxx, in fact): perhaps we could find out what was going on.We ended up visiting two knife factories, and could have visited more. The Forge de Laguiole - the one with the factory designed by Philippe Starck - had a large showroom, and a workshop behind it which the public were invited to wander around. We were lucky, it seemed, to have turned up on the day of the week when a shipment of blanks arrived and were stamped out as blades - but we deduced this from the posters around the wall, it was a free and unguided visit. Another poster implied that this was the firm which had relaunched the manufacture of the traditional style of knives, in 1987.
Across the way was another Coutellerie, and if the first had been too frugal with the information, this one erred on the other side. We were ushered into a room with raked seating like a little theatre, and lectured for 40 minutes. This answered all my questions (the problem seems to be that the village of Laguiole - pronounced, incidentally, "Lie-ole" - gained a reputation for its knives well before there was any system of trademarking. The name had passed into general use, and could not now be reclaimed) and many more, in a piece of performance which would have been skillful if it had known where to stop. We were then ushered into the workshop, and allowed to watch a selected employee grinding and polishing a bone handle to the required shape and finish. We left muttering about Health and Safety.
And drove south, out of the snow.
Mazamet has flower beds in the form of cyclists, their bicycles made of white tubing of some kind - and graffiti reading "Libérez José Bové". This was the highlight of the drive east along the foothills of the Montagne Noire, but the route south through the mountains themselves was stunning - and the town of Minerve even more so.
