Friday, July 22, 2011

Les Toiles de Mayenne

Les Toiles de Mayenne, at Fontaine Daniel, in the Mayenne, not far from my brother's place.  Textile works since 1806, temple of good taste and subtle colour, antidote to fear and loathing brought on by seeing too many DFS sofa warehouse or similar ads, holy ground and place of pilgrimage to lovely, textile-loving sister.  Great if you're into patchwork.



17 comments:

HLiza said...

Oh I'll go crazy over all those colourful textile!

Zhoen said...

Mmmmmm.... ahhhhhh.

the polish chick said...

why yes, i am into textiles, despite a complete lack of sewing know-how. if i could, i'd have a closet full of sumptuous fabrics to fondle in my spare time, but the guilt of all that undeveloped fabric potential would surely drive me to drink (more).

and psst! surely you mean "you're" not "your". and

Anne said...

This post and the last -- just luscious. The colors of the fabrics, the inventiveness of the sculptures. All joyous art!

Lucy said...

Thanks people.

I have to resist buying fabric much as I really don't get around to making much, but I did come away with a bundle of scraps anyway.

Cheers, Polish Chick, now corrected, it was late and in haste, no excuse though. Points on the spelling licence!

vivinfrance said...

As a quilter, I found these pictures ravishing. Where exactly in Mayenne? It may be do-able from here,

vivinfrance said...

Belay that! I've found it on the map.

marly youmans said...

And what did you fantasize about doing with your precious scraps?

Pam said...

Beautiful colours.

zephyr said...

Wowza! And you came home with a great new banner photo, too!!

marja-leena said...

Gorgeous, love the collage too! I love fabrics but also resist buying more since my existing stash hasn't shrunk much in years. I don't seem to get around to sewing much anymore - maybe blogging and blog-reading is taking up too much time :-)

Jan said...

Wonderful colours and collage . LOvely on this calm july morning..

YourFireAnt said...

You might send some of those shots to Selvedge Magazine. They're good.

T.

YourFireAnt said...

http://www.selvedge.org

Setu said...

How strange: I haven't thought of Fontaine Daniel for almost 20 years now. I often had my midday break there when I was digging bore holes all day long in N Mayenne for a soil survey. There was a nice restaurant there, with brilliant food, in the middle of the "model village". The chef was kind enough to accept me with my dirty field trousers... I say "model village" because, if I remember well, it had been built buy the local "entrepreneur" who had the same stone houses built for his wormen; the foremen's houses were a bit larger...

J Cosmo Newbery said...

Nah. Doesn't do it for me. But I'm a bloke, what would I know?

Lucy said...

Thanks again. The scraps will mostly probably become cushions, one of these days.

Viv - yes Mayenne is sort of Normandy, sort of Brittany, sort of Loire Valley, and not really any of them! But I imagine not too far for you.

Teresa - My sister took Selvedge for quite a long time. I had a quick look at their on-line edition, but the only real openings for public submission seemed to be competitions, and I don't really know enough about the place to try submitting a serious article. Also I'ma bit too tight to pay there rather large subscription fee! I daresay if they were looking for images from TdeM these would come up on Google anyway, and they'd probably take them if they wanted with or most like without asking. But thanks for the compliment!

Setu - Hello, always a pleasure! Is there anywhere in northern France you don't know inside-out(literally, bearing in mind your soil-boring activities)?:~) Yes, the village is interesting, the little houses have pretty flower and tree names, it reminds me of manufacturer-philanthropist developments in England like Saltaire and Port Sunlight. They do look genuinely comfortable houses too, not just bits of romantic and impractical whimsy. There's a nice tea shop in a baker's there, but it wasn't open the day we went. I didn't take many pics of the buildings, but a few of other things which I'll put up soon.

Cosmo - heheh, my brother said the same sort of thing, that he felt excluded by gender from taking the deep pleasure in textiles which we womenfolk did. I'm not quite sure why it should be so, but there it is.