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Published: July 11th 2008
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The road to Felletin
The rain and the clouds in the valleys I woke up today to thunder and lightning and pouring rain! Luckily, it was 7 am LOL Strange to hear and see that first thing in the morning. Usually in Calgary we don't get thunder and lightning until 5 in the afternoon on a hot day! We had planned to go to Felletin for their Friday morning market and to check out the tapestry exhibits there and then head back over to Aubusson to see the tapestry museum. Felletin is about 25 km from Crocq and it took us about 50 minutes to get there after we left at 9 am. The market was wonderful 😊 Everything you'd expect a French market to be - many meat vendors, many cheese vendors, plenty of fresh produce and assorted other interesting wares. We walked around for a while and bought some gifts for the folks back home. Of course, we also bought some cheese and produce and some delicious jambon sec from the Basque country in the Pyrnenées and some rhubarb confiture (jam). We found the tapestry exposition at the église du chateau and were wowed by the beauty and intricacy of the tapestries. Just before noon we drove back to Crocq for
The road to Felletin
More clouds in the valley lunch and a sieste but not before we took a detour to a town called Magnat which had a XIIth century church. Unfortunately, it was closed but I got a picture of the outside. After lunch, mom had a nap and I made some chicken salad to have for dinner. When mom woke up we drove to Aubusson to go and visit the tapestry museum there. The tapestries were astounding in their detail especially considering they were 500 years old! They were able to use the dyed wool to weave in such details as musculature and hair and facial expressions. Aubusson and Felletin are two cities reknowned for their tapestries since the XVth century. Both cities became royal weavers and were granted letters of patent on their weavings . During the Religious War many Protestant weavers left for Germany, Switzerland, England and Holland and the industry waned. In the beginning of the XXth century, there were 1500 -2000 jobs in the tapestry industry in these two cities but the artistic talent was not there and so the numbers have dwindled to about 50 weavers today. Many of the modern tapestries are colourful and fairly abstract but beautiful, nonetheless. French law
states that a tapestry edition must be limited to 6 copies with one for the workshop and one for the weaver. Hence they are prohibitively expensive! Mom bought me a small tapestry of some poppies which I will cherish forever! We walked around Aubusson shopping and browsing and we finally arrived back in Crocq around 7. We had a nice dinner of chicken salad, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber and shared a bottle of Clairette de Die (a sparkling wine from the Drome region where one of my French daughters lives!). If you could see how many times I have had to backspace to correct spelling errors due to the bottle being empty, you'd snicker! It's 9 o'clock now and mom has just gone to bed and I an not far behind....just let me get the pictures in!
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