Many days are irritating, this wasn’t one of them.
Sorry, the pictures are awful; but what you see resting on the desk is a wonderful Belle Epoque mirror frame we found earlier today (I put another mirror behind it for some of the pictures to get the effect.) We went to a charity shop called Emmaus which is here on the edge of town – not a very nice experience, a warehouse sort of affair. Not a terribly select clientele either. Anyway, in a far corner I noticed a piece of boiserie sticking out, a good many horrendous things in front of it. On close inspection I noticed the decoration on it wasn’t plaster. All of the flowers were individually carved in wood and nailed to the (also wood) base. Quite exceptional work. Mike negotiated what was an already embarrassingly low price (what one might pay for a cheap lunch at a bistro) and we brought it home. Thank goodness for the giant Nissan, the frame is massive.
Once already here at home and in the hallway I noticed the back was marked!!! Baudson et Cie, Paris & Charleville. I’d seen the name before but couldn’t place it. Of course that doesn’t really matter in times of Google… And so: Emile Baudson’s work is seen in Paris by a family member of Alexander II of Russia in the 1860’s who then puts him in charge of the restoration work of Mariinski Palace in Kiev. On the back of this work he opens his own ateliers in Charleville (then Paris) and goes on to decorate a number of great houses in Europe and the Americas. Just thrilling to find something so spectacular just sitting abandoned in a warehouse. And so that was my Saturday.
I’ll take some good pictures in sunlight tomorrow.
My Mazamet 
A charity shop, and you haggled. Have you no shame man! 😉
LikeLiked by 3 people
None at all!!! You told me everything is meaningless and so that covers me behaving badly 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Are you selling it?
LikeLike
Is this a hobby or part of your everyday entrepreneurial efforts? Will you restore,mirror and then sell it? I’m the last person to burrow through old warehouses for stuff — a mat on the ground, a blanket, a bottle of whiskey and a laptop and I’m set.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It was an accidental find. We were looking for a linen cupboard 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Meaningless bad behavior. I like that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
visit Hariod, you’ll understand: https://contentedness.net/2016/11/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks. Will do
LikeLike
I do not regret to inform you that I do not lack the unnecessary understanding of the aforementioned excerpt. Although following Hariod prior to my my unmentioned departure from Central America, there was a time of absence regarding said authors presence in the annulus archives of my file in the actual time the writing occurred. My year of absence, though not unintentional, was an oversight of magnanimous proportions not foreseen had the aforementioned post been called to my attention.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bastard! Send Jim to my most . . . most . . . most oblique post ever, why don’t you!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oblique? Possibly but not near as unobtuse as it possibly might not have been.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s one of my favourites of all time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s not nuffink wrong wiv a double negative.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Lovely looking piece. A bumpkin like me would buy it and only figure out what I had later.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks! I usually don’t go for Belle Epoque, but there was something special about this one.
LikeLike
it’s always so great to find that hidden treasure
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is! Almost as fun as making someone cry 😀
LikeLike
such a vicious one you are 🙂
LikeLike
We used to haunt Emmaus…before they started sorting out the gold from the dross and selling it on before the hoi polloi had a chance at it, but did no have such luck as this!
We did buy a similar mirror…but without a name….flowers carved individually then attached, in a junk shop near Angers. Some bright spark had painted the flowers
in ghastly pastel shades which took a great deal of removal, but it was stunning at the back of the entrance hall. We sold it to a local notaire when we moved…nice to see one of them shelling out rather than raking it in…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apparently that’s the case everywhere now. They have dealers go in first for an initial sorting. This was so dusty, I imagine it just sat there, hidden for many years.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a find.
Well done.
Emmaus is an interesting chain, I find it smelly and full of odd people but, yes, treasures are still out there to be found.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We were thoroughly pleased. We’ve visited a number of times and never found anything worth bringing home. As Helen says, the dealers take most of the good stuff before anyone else has a chance…
LikeLike
Nothing like the acquisition of unexpected treasure at a bargain price. What a splendid find.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m thrilled 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sounds like a humdinger of a day! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thoroughly enjoyable 🙂 🙂 🙂
LikeLike
A very attractive find. But how could you barter the low price down? I never have the confidence, & always pay the marked price. My sister, on the other hand, has no shame & consequently she buys many bargains. Are you keeping this? It looks good where it is.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not me! Mike is the negotiator. He got very good at it in the days when he was buying the house in Morocco.
And YES!!! We’re keeping it. I love it where it is, and so does Mike. As we don’t always agree, when we do, we have to take advantage of it 😀
LikeLike
Thank you, Jesus.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bloody hell, PInky…that’s the find of the century! You are so LUCKY! And it fits that spot perfectly. It’s as if that wall has been waiting for you to the right frame. 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Seneca — ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’ 😀
We spent the evening having this precise discussion. While I was making dinner Mike came downstairs having been looking at the mirror to say it was an “extraordinary pattern” finding things like this. Five minutes later he came back into the kitchen to say, “no, it isn’t!”
With a reasonable amount of knowledge, pattern recognition becomes almost automatic. Think of it as the difference between touching silk versus polyester, but applied to objects 🙂
LikeLike
Hmm…that is so interesting. Not just in terms of art but in terms of life in general. When good [or bad] things happen for no apparent reason, I often catch myself doing the ‘it’s fate thing’, but maybe it’s simply mindset meeting opportunity. Maybe opportunities happen all the time but we only ‘see’ them when our mindset is ‘in sync’ with whatever is presented…
Philosophically it would be a non-deterministic middle path, wouldn’t it?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Could (prior) knowledge not be figured into the deterministic narrative?
LikeLike
No, because it’s kind of ‘passive’ and there is no guarantee that at the moment where opportunity meets decision, some other variable won’t pop up to ruin everything – like a sudden itch, or a minor domestic crisis. Until the moment you make that decision, anything is possible.
LikeLike
Magpie! Delighted for you all the same 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tell me you haven’t already asked it who the fairest of them all is? Be honest
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can’t help it! 😀
LikeLike
Re “We went to a charity shop called Emmaus which is here on the edge of town – not a very nice experience, a warehouse sort of affair. Not a terribly select clientèle either.”
Imagine! A great find while slumming! Did you expect a better shopping experience trying to find special pieces a shop owner was ignorant of? If the clientèle were more select that frame would have been long gone, along with all of the other quality items.
Tsk, tsk. Our petticoats are showing!
LikeLiked by 3 people
I wasn’t complaining, I was describing 😛
And that logic doesn’t quite pan out, because it’s only good piece I’ve ever seen there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This true though, that these gems only survive to be spotted because the hoi polloi don’t recognise their value ( aesthetic and otherwise)
Miaow!
LikeLike
Great find – well done for spotting it!! I didn’t realise that you had an Emmaus in Mazamet. I’ve not found anything decent in Narbonne and the one near Pezenas in ages, but friends dragged home the most amazing buffet a few years ago – and arts and crafts piece, rounded bevel cut glass in the upper doors, probably prohibitively expensive to replace if it ever got broken.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s down in Aussillon, near the déchèterie. Only open twice a week, and only dependably on the Saturday.
I’ve always been afraid of verre bombé. With boisterous dogs in the house I try to stick to the most solid possible options 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s great – I’ll try and check it out if I get there on a Saturday!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wonderful piece and what a find. Can’t say more than that because raw envy is eating me alive
LikeLiked by 1 person
As you’re an art-deco fan, the Liquidarium here often has some interesting pieces. We saw some nice deco mirrors there last month (in the style of the one below) for between 60 and 100.
LikeLike
Perfect! Wonderful find! I love this sort of thing. And I suspect the item found you as well. I often think these treasures are not inanimate – wood has a sort of sacredness if not a soul. It needed another go-round. Yay.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do love the idea it’s been saved, liked Cinderella. And now she’ll go on to have a very glamorous life 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
You really have to have high ceilings for a piece like that. Which may be the reason it was there so long and dusty. How many people have the required ceiling height AND shop at a place like that?
It must have been a pain to hang though.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s definitely true. It’s a Goodwill sort of place, so mostly people looking for things in just decent usable condition, rather than anything pretty.
LikeLike