From modern to rustic at La Borne

The first place we tried to get into at La Borne ended up being the last place we visited. We were there too early after lunch, so we wandered to the very modern and sleek ceramics center, the more traditional pottery museum, and several different potters' shops before returning.

Here's a photo of me taking a picture that my friend Sue took in the ceramics center. I was trying to get a wide-angle view of one of the display areas. I don't remember how successful I was.

Sue also took this photo in the ceramics center shop. I don't even remember seeing it. Would you call it "Handyman"? Reminds me of an old joke of CHM's about a place where « la main de l'homme n'a jamais mis les pieds ».

At the end of the afternoon, we stopped at this pottery studio and shop where we had started right after lunch. You can see that a big batch of pottery was out drying in the sun. Here's another view of it.

The local clay is gray and contains a good amount of sand or crushed sandstone. That makes stoneware, a very hard, almost unbreakable product. This shop, l'Atelier Bottani Dechaud, was a place where I saw a lot of things I felt like taking home, but I resisted. The big flower pots and planters were pretty... and pretty expensive.

Here's a photo of the inside of the shop that Sue took. The people are not anybody that we knew. The place was jam-packed with pots of all kinds. Here you are seeing only one end of it.