Saturday 27 December 2008

Ghost signs (8): Chatelaudren

Some towns in Brittany seem to have more than their fair share of ghost signs. One is Guingamp (see here); another is nearby Chatelaudren which I visited today. This one was perhaps my favourite:


Nearby was a sort of patchwork/palimpsest of ghost signs:


However, although not strictly a ghost sign, the most special - and famous - in the town is this one:

Le Petit Echo de la Mode was one of France's very first magazines aimed at family women, and enjoyed great success for many years. It was founded in 1880 by a Breton in Paris, Charles Huon de Penanster, with his wife Claire Le Roux and friend Emmanuel Ferré. Each weekly issue included a free sewing pattern, and from the 1920s was printed in the works at Chatelaudren. In 1950, it sold 1.5 million copies each week. Only in the late 1960s did the magazine begin to struggle, and the title finally disappeared in 1984. Today, the former printworks is a heritage centre - a reminder of the decades when this small, rural town was France's second centre of fashion.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

These pictures from Brittany are beautiful. I love to see ghost doors -- things that have been bricked up -- imagining what used to be behind the. :)

How come you go to Brittany a lot -- do you have family there?

Linda

CarolineLD said...

My parents retired to Brittany a few years ago. (They worried they might see less of me if they emigrated, but have been wondering how to get rid of me ever since!).

Peter Ashley said...

These are simply stunning Caroline.

CarolineLD said...

Thank you - I was amazed they came out at all, as my fingers were almost too cold to operate the camera! For some reason, Chatelaudren felt several degrees colder than Guingamp on what was already a very cold day.