Ruavista - As padarias parisienses

THE PAINTED boulangerie decors, which date from the end of the 19th and early 20th century, are still numerous in Paris. First of all, it's their quality, quality of materials used, as with the decors themselves that have allowed for their preservation. The efforts of the shop owners too, since many of the decors have been maintained over the years, and of the government which has placed some of them on a list of protected historical monuments, have provided for their longevity.

These shop windows, which are typical of Parisian urban décor, are indeed truly historical monuments, since they are representatives of popular art of the 19th century.

During the second half of the 19th century, retail trade is prosperous in France and shopkeepers want to show off their social and economic achievement through their richly decorated shops. During the same period, competition was stiff and each shop owner had to distinguish his shop through its decor.

In the middle of the 19th century, there were so many shop owners that they called upon decorators to transform their shops, which prompted decorators to specialize in decorating grocery boutiques.

In this way, no other commerce is as representative as the boulangerie. Even though the importance of decor would decline after the 1920's, the boulangerie has remained to this day a commerce that is traditionally more decorated than others.

First of all, the sign itself is there to identify the business. Usually, "boulangerie-pâtisserie", (a boulangerie sells bread and a pâtisserie sells pastries, it's very common the same shop selling bread and pastries),

but sometimes simply "boulangerie". In any case, the sign never gives the name of the owner, but it is not uncommon to see the owner's initials painted on the ceiling inside the store.The letters were usually in gold on a black background.

Click on the picture above to see other bakery signs

Then there are the painted placards. Their role is to advertise: they must draw the attention of passers-by. Their number and size depend on the size of the shop. There are two types of placards. Those informing customers of the shop specialties.

Indeed, at the time, it was the décor itself that had to bring in customers, as the products themselves were not displayed in the window; whereas, after the 1920's, it was the products being displayed that had to be tempting. In general, the products are simply listed. The emphasis is sometimes placed on the bread-making process. In rare cases, the placards display advertising slogans.

The purely decorative placards also play an important role.

They are often rustic paintings, which, besides their advertising function, play a sentimental role for rural natives living in the

city,

then numerous in Paris, by reminding them of their home country.The subject of the paintings always remind of wheat and bread-making. They sometimes involve mills,a seed sower, a sheaf of wheat or flowers. Regarding flowers, it is interesting to note that the ones that are traditionally associated with the culture of grain, like red poppies, cornflowers, or daisies, are not always depicted.Rather, decorators often painted flowers that were in vogue at the time, for example, hollyhocks between 1870 and 1880 or irises in 1900.These paintings are always adorned with ornaments here and there, in the style of the times. These decors are painted on placards placed under glass. This process has the advantage of being easily maintained and is an expression of the infatuation with clean materials, which was incited by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur: ceramic, marble, glass.

The shop owners generally did not deal directly with the decorators, rather with entrepreneurs whose responsibility it was to coordinate the different specialists working on building the boulangerie and providing the materials needed for making bread. They sometimes put their signature on the signs next to those of the decorators. The workshops that specialize in decorating boutiques were Parisian, and they exported their products to the provinces and sometimes as far away as Venezuela (some decors painted for a butcher shop in Caracas were painted by the Benoist workshop in 1893).

The two main workshops were the Thivet workshop, founded in 1854, and the Benoist workshop, founded in 1859 and whose adress was Passage des Thermopyles, in the 14 th arrondissement (district) of Paris.

Most of the decors that still remain today carry their signature. One also finds decors carrying the names of the Anselm workshop, founded in 1887, or the Raybaud workshop, founded in 1859.

The big workshops had a staff of about ten people. Thus, the Benoist workshop had eight people working for them in 1910, besides the owner at the time, Maximilien-Théophile Benoist, the son of the workshop's founder, Maximilien-Louis. An apprentice, Marcel Achard; a handler, Jean-Jean, in charge of handling and positioning the shop window placards; a letter painter, Eugène Achard, in charge of the sign bands and of the placards including the inscriptions; a fleuriste, Gaston Duquesne, a specialist in flower paintings; a maroufleur, Soleil, whose job it was to affix the painted canvases on the glasses; a landscape artist, Tabourin; a gilder, Mme Dourlens, whose specialty was to put gold leaf on the letters, nets, and medallion settings; and, finally, a décorateur, Albert Raybaud, who will start his own workshop up in 1912. His job was to conceive of the décor as a whole and to create mock-ups of the placards and ceilings.

The first job of the décorateur is to create a mock-up, submitted to the client. The outline of the subject can be done directly on the canvas, often made of moleskine, a waxed canvas which does not require any preparation, but, most often, it is traced on a special thin and resistant paper, which is then perforated by stippling to be brought back to the canvas which will then be set under glass. This system has the advantage of allowing for modifications, which would be impossible if working directly on the canvas; it also allows for the use of models.

Once the drawing is brought back on the canvas with the help of charcoal powder, the painting is applied in very fine layers so as to not increase its width so that the glass can be affixed to it. The gilding comes next. It can be done on the canvas, but it is most often applied directly to the glass.
The painted canvas and the golden ornaments are then marouflés, which means that they are glued to the glass with the help of some adhesive gum, composed of Arabic gum and liquid sugar dissolved in water. The only step that is left is to affix the placards on the shop window of the store.