An Intoduction

Scruffy and Squiffy go to France

(or 4 old men and an oversized dog hit the road)

I was recently lucky enough to be offered a trip to France by a friend of mine who is a local Antique Dealer. He was driving his van to the Riberac region to take his friend Christophe home, and invited my partner and I to join them. We were to spend a few days with Christophe and his family, taking in the local markets and Brocants, before wending our way back to Paris for the markets there. (For those unaware of them, Brocants are basically second hand shops, however there are treasures to be found)!

Sleeping in the van at night and eating in Les Routiers along the way, we were in Riberac before we knew it. We had been on the lookout for Brocants and Antique shops all the way, however we only found one which was still open. (It seems that the Antique Trade in France is sadly in swift decline, with many businesses closing over the last few years).

With a great sense of anticipation, the van was parked on the pavement across the road from the Brocant, and the dog left inside. (Bulls and China Shops come to mind)! After 2 days and hundreds of miles, we were at the gates of Nirvana!

At this point you may be wondering what this has to do with the subject matter of the blog. Well here is the crux of it. My reason for going on the trip was to buy Trench Art and blank Shell Casings, and I was hoping to find them in the many Brocants and Markets that we would be visiting. And I was not to be disappointed!

Andy, my partner of 8 years, likes his Art Deco, I, as you may have realised, like Trench Art. Jason (the Antiques Dealer friend) just likes a profit! lol Andy and I sell on ebay under the name andy_warne and we were on the hunt for stuff to sell. I found a couple of decorated casings and Andy picked up some lamp shades, and a beautiful Art Deco lamp with a spelter bird on it (pictured below) while Jason rang a contact back in London to sell him some Industrial Shades that he was just about to purchase! (Talk about a quick turn around)!!

After an exhausting hour of bargaining, it was time to get Christophe home to his wife and children, so next stop Riberac.

I won't bore you with each and every Brocant that we visited in Riberac, just suffice it to say that I managed to get quite a sizeable collection of Shell Casings over the three days there, one deal alone being for 17 casings, (a portion of which I have shown below). You may have noticed, though, that I only mentioned Brocants and not Markets. Having left the blistering heat of London for the sunny climbs of Southern France, it was so hot that the sky it self was sweating profusely from the moment that we got there until we hit the White Cliffs of Dover. It rained more every day than even I, a Mancunian, could cope with! Of course the French could not deal with it, and all of the markets that we had planned to visit there were cancelled.

To get back to the purpose of this blog, Christophe allowed me to photograph the Shell Casings below. These belonged to his Great Uncle who had served in the French Army during WWI, so unusually, there is a provenance still attached to them. He has not come back to me yet to fill in the full story, however he will be in London over the next few days, so I will ask him to get the history off his mother, and I will do a full section specifically on them. I will include details of the construction of the pieces gleaned from my research materials, and a potted history of the art form.

Although I am not an expert, I am more than willing to field questions on Trench Art, and am happy to further research if I cannot answer directly a question asked.

Part of the collection from France

For those interested in buying any pieces from my collection, or are looking for particular pieces that I may have, drop me an email and I can send you more specific photographs. The more unusual pieces that I have, I will be doing an article on in the near future, giving as much information as I can about construction methods and why I believe that they are unusual. I will also do an article on the Paris Markets, which I found Amazing!

If anyone is still reading and wondering at the title for this article, well Scruffy is the dog, and we were squiffy in the evenings after a glass of wine or two! lol (Thank Jason for that little joke).

 Scruffy

Who needs the Paris Ritz? (Two of the squiffys)!