Provence

Where wicker is king

Vallabrègues has a long-standing reputation for its wickerwork. On the banks of the Rhone near Tarascon, the village cultivates the art of transforming the osier harvested on the river islands. Memory and traditions are carried on by the museum, the basket maker, the chair manufacturers and the Wickerwork Festival in August.

Vallabrègues is a surprising village. On the left bank of the Rhone, it is a part of the Gard, an enclave forming the only outpost of the Languedoc in the Provençal department of Bouches-du-Rhône. Vallabrègues has also retained its link with its mother Rhone at a time when many of the riverside towns and villages have turned their backs on it, reminding itself, with some of its land liable to flooding, of how risky it can be to forget that the river is there.

People started working with osier in the 12th Century. Nourished with wet clay and cooked under the Provençal sun, the banks of river soil above Tarascon are ideal for the plant. Osier prospered and, with it, wickerwork, which used its stalks to weave seats and backs for rustic chairs. Activity flourished in the 18th and 19th Centuries but declined in modern times. But memory is resourceful. Concerned to preserve this heritage, the “Musée de la Vannerie” (Wickerwork Museum) dedicates 250 m² and two floors to the flexible stalks of the white or common osier, which is still known as basket makers’ willow. There is also Daniel Benibghi, a basket maker, who settled here a couple of years ago with the aim, already achieved, of replanting an osier bed. Then there are the venerable “Houses”, Monleau and Lacroix, chair manufacturers, who have been in Vallabrègues for 200 years!



Would you like to know more? Come to the Wickerwork Festival on 12 and 13 August, where an exhibition of French and European basket makers and a procession in memory of the “baïssiers”, the proud oarsmen who followed the Rhone as far as the Camargue to “hunt” the osier, will teach you far more than these few lines.

Information:
- Mairie de Vallabrègues. 04 66 59 20 52.
- Musée de la Vannerie(Wickerwork Museum) (closed Monday and Tuesday). 04 66 59 48 14.
- Wickerwork Festival. www.fetedelavannerie.com

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