14. Thierry May Antiquaire: cheminées, carrelage, elements d’architecture
We have been enjoying our time at the Moulin. Exploring the area. Getting to know neighbors in Courances and fellow locataires in Fleury. I am enjoying the hiking trails. We have now bought a car and done the many necessary chores for our new house. Utilities, health care, cable TV, and the familiar list goes on. We are enjoying life with our Catholic church friends in Milly.
I moved across the ocean to Scotland in the late nineties so have a rough idea of the drill. We were using the same company Elizabeth and French Affaires clients buying antiques in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue used for this move. They had agents in the US do our pickup in Dallas.
Predicting arrival times is a bit like predicting when fish will bite. They give you a ballpark date. Once your goods are in their hands, you are captive to their timetables. You are one 40-foot container on a ship with myriad ones like yours. They took our goods overland to Houston and the ship left from there. Once that has happened, then things are a bit easier to calculate. They even give you a GPS tracking link.
The ships coming to le Havre don’t go just directly there. Coming from the west they go to the farthest channel port first (Rotterdam) and then zig-zag their way back east (Bremerhaven, Southampton et al). Le Havre is last.
We weren’t sitting on our hands until that happened. I am married to the collector without peer. There are several nice antiquités places in Fontainebleau. I am even reasonably excited. This isn’t buying nice things for which one does not have any obvious immediate need. We are buying things for our new house. We are doing something useful, practical, necessary.
I repeat that all the way down General Montgomery forest road from Courances to the shop of Thierry May in Fontainebleau. We judged that the best place to start. As it would turn out—thank my lucky stars—it had almost all the goodies we might want, and more. I can leave Elizabeth to the many other vide grenier, brocante and kindred shop options in our area that the French love to make available.
This was a truly amazing store—a depot vente—compared with some of the places Elizabeth had taken me to, begged me to go, insisted upon pain of death that I stop. The genre elements d’architecture had a nice beckoning ring to it.
We entered the shop off a side road in Fontainebleau. It was one of those places that has nowhere to park. All the logical outside parking are instead filled with elements d’architecture. We are talking monumental stone. Enormous fountains. Granite fireplace mantles (elegant wooden ones inside). Paving material from yesteryear. Metal grillwork. Garden and patio stone items.
You weave your way through this labyrinth of impressive items mixed in with junk; sorry, the word is precise. We weren’t in the market for things like this, not immediately at any rate. Or I wasn’t. I could see Elizabeth going into calculating and mental note-taking mode. I headed inside as fast as I could thinking that might move things along. Maybe a bit.
M. May was wandering casually about, having learned that the best salesman in shops like his pretend they don’t own it or work there. They hum and act as if engaged in something serious in a corner of the room. Pricing a nice set of carving knives. Adjusting the arm on a huge stuffed bear. Repairing an epaulet on a “looks like a bargain” uniform from the war of 1870. Let your imagination go.
In fact, this is one of the nicer shops I have had the pleasure to visit. On my own steam, I might add. Very nice furniture. Lots of occasional tables in very good shape. Bookcases. Dining tables and chairs. I’d say we hit the jackpot, in fact. If we thought we’d about made up our mind, he’d open the door to a further room. I was so personally excited I even bought something that made no sense. I forget what it was, but I know that was the mood I had been in.
One very impressive piece was sitting right near the door. It and two others formed a set that would work very fine in our dining room. It was probably near the door because very big men said they would carry it no further. It was a massive 17th century cabinet, taller than me, as wide as tall, with two doors opening on the top half, and two on the smaller lower half. Its compelling feature was its fine, cloth-lined interior, back of opening doors, back and sides and all the shelves. I’d never seen anything like it. It was full from top to bottom with blue delft plates, soup bowls, and attendant gravy boats and such like.
The other two pieces were lowboys in the same style. One could go in the entrance hall and the other could sit across the dining table with its massive counterpart. These rooms were not too far into our house so no one would expire setting them in place.
Taking Elizabeth aside I said, he is having trouble selling this. It is impressive as a historical piece as one enters the shop, and while it has not been here since the 17th century, this is a piece more to admire than to move into your home. Our house, on the other hand, is its same age and it was made for our dining room. I’ll handle this.
I gave him a price within 25% of his asking price and requested he throw in the delft. This would give us some wiggle room, as he could determine the value of the delft and decide whether it was going to be hard to get rid of as well. Elizabeth took over from here out. She is prettier than me.
He could probably see we were going to buy a good deal more, and so he agreed. Behind the scenes he may have breathed a big sigh of relief. But the three 17th century pieces suited our new home perfectly, as did the half dozen occasional tables we bought. When you buy that much, you also get the delivery thrown in.
The work on the house was done. There was a bed on the second floor. The utilities were working. We would have enough furniture to work with. There was something romantic about letting its shiny new self just speak for itself, only 20% filled with furniture. Patrick sold us a nice dining table with 10 chairs that Elizabeth would have reupholstered. Two armoires for red and blue bedrooms. The chimney was cleaned. We had an old settee the house left us. The kitchen was about done.
Friends from Dallas came down from Paris to visit us and see our new home. I have a photo of us all sharing a glass of champagne, bare walls behind us, in the large sitting room. The walls were timber and plaster, a kind of colombage effect but inside the house. A nice deep red setting off the timber framing.
And guess what? It was getting time to get our puppy. This would be his new home too.