Friday 30 April 2021

Car boot sales and flea markets: a sense of place

 You can tell a lot about a culture from what gets sold in junk shops and at car boots (garage sales if you're from the US) and flea markets. Here's a sense of France, or to be very particular, a little slice of France in between the huge wheat fields of the Beauce, and the valley of the Seine, about an hour from Paris by not very fast train.

french car boot and phrenology head



  • Firemen's helmets. The Sapeurs Pompiers are something special. A lot of them are volunteers. There are old-fashioned helmets with a feather crest like a Roman centurion's moulded into the metal, and new shiny astronaut-like bubble helmets. You see a lot of these. (Army and police stuff? not so much.) Often, the same table holds a collection of model fire engines, too.
  • Enamel coffee pots. Yes, this is vintage France. The little wooden-bodied cubical coffee grinders with a metal funnel and handle on top are also typically French. What I didn't know till I looked what that they used to be a major product for Peugeot - as did woodworking tools; Peugeot was a general foundry and at some point I suppose they decided they might as well make cars, too.
  • Occasionally you see a collection of teapots. But they are either Berber fake-silver teapots (and Moroccan tea is a whole different thing) or they are collector's teapots. What you almost never see is the plain brown pottery teapot beloved of generations of Brits. Sorry, no PG Tips here.
  • Le Creuset casseroles. I have a lovely collection of these now; casseroles, dishes, frying pans, ramekins... in the classic orange colour, in grey, yellow, red, and my favourite, lime green. But there are other brands, too - and often not enamelled but just big cast iron cauldrons. Never mind cooking the Christmas goose, I've seen one you could probably get a whole pig into. See this, and understand how French cooking ticks.
  • Souvenirs from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - once part of the French colonies. Less often, lovely cloths from French-speaking West Africa. I've pretty much furnished one entire room with Tunisian blue and white carpets bought at car boots.
  • Souvenirs from elsewhere in France - bright Quimper pottery, Eiffel towers (usually in ridiculous quantities: do people collect them?), dolls in French regional costumes. A car boot can be a miniature tour of the country if you want it to be.
  • Glass jars. Why? Because there is a massive tradition of making your own conserves - not just jams, but chestnuts in syrup, potted meats, all kinds of stuff. (And I know there still is, because the supermarkets suddenly start selling preserving jars and industrial amounts of sugar the moment the jam-making season begins.)
  • Agricultural equipment, because this is farming country; and riding kit, because this is horse country. Old pitchforks made entirely of wood, scythes, sickles, cast iron tractor seats, horsecollars, riding boots, and occasionally, a saddle so shiny and smelling of leather that it can only have been used once or twice (I wonder why).
  • Old flutes, oboes, clarinets, and musical instrument making tools. And this is in our tiny little area between La Couture-Boussey and Ivry la Bataille and Ezy-sur-Eure, just a few kilometers. Why? Because there were musical instrument makers everywhere back in the nineteenth century. Today, Marigaux still makes oboes here, and there are businesses making accessories like reeds and the felt for key pads.
  • The buvette usually sells a choice of chipo-frites or merguez-frites (regular or spicy sausage with chips). The barbecue is a solid iron affair, hand-made by some local with a bit of welding experience and some agricultural scrap. There's almost always a choice of wine, kir, and beer, as well as various canned drinks; Lipton's Ice Tea is still more popular than Coke around here. And someone has always cooked a tarte tatin, upside-down apple tart, at a euro a slice. 
  • I mustn't forget; the set of corkscrew and wine thermometer, and the little metal wine-tasting cups. Even though we're on the borders of cider country here, wine is part of the nation. Liberty, equality, oenology.
But my favourite find is nineteenth century historical or satirical plates. The first one I found was de Lesseps drawing his plan of the Suez canal. Then I found the French lion-tamer who went to the Great Exhibition in London. Then the Exposition Universelle in Paris - which had pretty much the same idea as the London exhibition, a chance to show off the entire world and promote French commerce and industry.
plate with two dancers



Then I found 'Le Club des Femmes', a little piece of (anti-) feminist history. A chap wearing an apron sweeps the dust off his doorstep and promises to get dinner ready while his wife strides off to the Womens' Club saying 'Back later, be good'. And a plate celebrating Montgolfier's balloon. And an extravagant plate, part of  a set showing you how to do different dances - this one is the polka, and they're really enjoying themselves!

I don't think I've ever paid more than a euro for a plate. The ones I don't buy are the puzzle plates. There are loads of them; the turn-it-upside-down-and-it's-something-else plates, the rebus plates (like a tablecloth, water, and a lion spelling Nappe-Eau-Lion or Napoleon), the Ouere's-Ouallie plates (well, their nineteenth-century equivalent).  I don't quite get the humour and to be honest, most of the French people I've asked don't either.

And then of course all the stuff you'd get anywhere. The kids' clothes that kids have grown out of. Last year's fashions. The old cutlery and the old toys and the jigsaw with one piece missing. But it's the items I've mentioned that tell me yes, I'm in France. 

I wonder what German flea markets are like? or Spanish? do they have them in Japan? ... maybe some time I'll get the chance to find out.


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