The Brocante at Claye-Souilly
Your taste of life in Paris and France
ParlerParis.com
Monday, April 25, 2011 • Paris, France
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Easter Sunday, another gloriously warm and sunny day in the City of (Bright) Light (and blue skies), more than 1000 exhibitors/sellers set out their wares in the parking lot of Carrefour at Claye-Souilly, a suburb of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne department (which includes such important tourist destinations as the Châteaux of Fontainebleau and
Vaux-le-Vicomte and Disneyland Paris).
This was one of the year's largest "Vide-Greniers" or "Brocantes" (rummage or attic sales) organized by the "Organisation Bel-Ange." My long-time friend, Glenn Cooper, who like us, manages a small group of luxury apartments and also develops Fractional Ownership properties, is an 'attic sale addict.' He drives all over the region almost weekly to scour the sales for what he calls 'little jewels' among the piles of discarded goods. As the saying goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."
I have never much enjoyed perusing other people's trash, although I have many friends who have a similar addiction to "brocantes." Perhaps it's because over the years of moving to many different cities and accumulating way too many things with each new household, I've held more yard sales myself than the average person. Now that I've been living in a much smaller space the last almost 17 years, accumulating 'things' is the last thing on the agenda. The moment I see something attractive, I think: "Do I want to own it, clean it, move it, store it, sell it?"...which is the normal progression for the life of "tchotchkes" (pronounced CHACH-KEES).
If you don't know this Yiddish word, one might define tchotchkes as "small toys, gewgaws, knickknacks, baubles, lagniappes, trinkets, or kitsch" (Wikipedia.org), but anyone who knows Yiddish, knows that this one word conjures up thousands of images which fully illustrate exactly what we found at the brocante...other people's trash...the kinds of things that turn an elegant home into a junk yard.
Still, Glenn is right. Among the tchotchkes there are jewels, if one looks long and hard enough. We wandered up and down every single aisle of the brocante at Claye-Souilly on one of the warmest spring days I can remember, feeling my skin turning pink and healthier with vitamin D. Every now and then we'd stop to scan the items on a table and chat with the merchants. What fascinated me were the way certain collections of goods were arranged...old model cars, old promotional ashtrays, ceramic yard cats, hats stacked a mile high, etc.
Glenn goes so often that he knows the family who runs the snack stands. He even knows a few of the merchants. There were a couple who sell from a truck that cleverly opens from the side allowing their goods to spill out onto the asphalt while they sit on a sofa inside the truck in the shade. Glenn likened it to that 1970s Norman Lear sitcom "Sandford and Son" starring Redd Foxx who played a 65-year-old junk dealer living in Watts alongside his 30-year-old son. Remembering the old man calling his son, Lamont, "big dummy" and Lamont retorting with "old fool" brought back funny memories, along with the many times I've manned a yard sale and sold things for pennies. (One time I actually sold a signed Robert Rauschenberg limited edition print for $5, without knowing its true value -- now worth several thousand dollars! That was one of those 'jewels,' no?)
I noticed that among the tchotchkes were lots of wild boars...in glass, in ceramic, in plastic, in you name it. It struck me funny since I am reading Jeffrey Greene's newest book, "The Golden-Bristled Boar -- Last Ferocious Beast of the Forrest." Sadly I missed Jeffrey'sbooklaunch at the Village Voice on April 12thbecause I was preparing for travel to Nice and New York, but being an old friend and quite the gentleman, he kindly posted a copy of it and inscribed, "May good luck boars bring you light and prosperity."
Now you might think that boars are "boar-ing," but not the way Jeffrey Greene tells it. The book has me so hooked on these beastly creatures, that I became fascinated by how many boar tchotchkes I could find. I wanted to buy them all up and send them to Jeffrey as gifts, but decided against cluttering up his own magnificent presbytery-turned-home in Burgundy into Fred Sandford's junk yard.
Glenn and I did cull out a few jewels from among the trash -- he purchased a beautiful ceramic hand-painted bowl made in France that looked very old and very authentic for a whopping 12€ and I came home with a 2€ crystal ball (to bring light and prosperity) and a bronze hand-carved plaque inscribed with "DELARUE Bronzes d'Art, 108 Rue Vieille du Temple, Paris" which the merchant let me have for 10€. Internet research revealed that the plaque dates to a well-known mid 19th-century foundry at that address -- literally steps from my apartment!
For those of you with attic sale addiction, there are lots of brocantes and vide-greniers to visit in and around the City of Bright Light and Blue Skies where you will find the 'jewels' among the 'tchotchkes.'
The next big ones by Bel-Ange are:
Sunday 15 May 2011
LA QUEUE EN BRIE (94)
centre ville, rue Charles Peguy at Pont Banneret
5 a.m. to 6 p.m.
600 exhibitors
Sunday 22 May 2011
BRIE COMTE ROBERT (77)
parking HYPER U rue Gustave Eiffel
5 a.m. to 6 p.m.
500 exhibitors
A la prochaine...
Adrian Leeds
Editor, Parler Paris
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P.S.Purchase your copy of The Golden-Bristled Boar at the Village Voice or by visiting our Recommended Reading page:parlerparis/books/
