{"id":1450,"date":"2020-10-24T08:49:47","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T07:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maisonlamothe.com\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2020-10-24T08:49:47","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T07:49:47","slug":"the-buffet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maisonlamothe.com\/en\/the-buffet","title":{"rendered":"The buffet"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row el_class=”white fullwidthtext”][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

The buffet<\/h1>\n

As William Morris once famously said,\u2019 Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.\u2019 Not a bad maxim, but my own would be, \u2018Make your home a haven for treasure with a past and a story to tell.\u2019<\/p>\n

Furnishing Maison Lamothe began well before we moved here.\u00a0 Having spent three years living in rented furnished houses as we road-tested life in France, acquiring more stuff often caused problems. Not that this stopped me.\u00a0 \u2018But it\u2019s so beautiful,\u2019 I would wail to my long-suffering husband, \u2018It\u2019s only little. It\u2019ll take up no room at all.\u2019<\/p>\n

Small was not an adjective I could have used to justify my purchase in early Spring 2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An English couple who were friends of friends were going back to the UK after many years of living in France and were selling off most of their belongings.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019m just looking,\u2019 I shouted over my shoulder as I left home, \u2018just being nosey.\u2019<\/p>\n

The couple lived in a large 1930s Art Deco house \u2013 not the standard Gascon farmhouse that we Brits all seem drawn towards and I have to admit I was more intrigued to see the house than the stuff for sale.<\/p>\n

As ever I got talking and the lady told me about the house\u2019s history.\u00a0\u00a0During WW2 a vet and his family had lived there.\u00a0\u00a0In the town there was a camp known as an \u2018Accommodation Centre\u2019 which housed many Jewish refugees who had been expelled or rounded up: many of whom would ultimately end up being deported to the infamous concentration camp at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

According to her, the vet had to care for the Alsatian dogs that guarded the camp.\u00a0\u00a0Throughout the War he managed to smuggle out internees and hide them within the house until they could be found homes.\u00a0\u00a0After the War he was awarded the Legion d\u2019honneur.<\/p>\n

I loved the story and found it sad that the people who had bought the house had plans to extend it and modernize it.\u00a0\u00a0There was still an air of the past swirling about the place which had changed little since the 1930s and this was all about to be lost.<\/p>\n

Other anecdotes about the house\u2019s other previous occupants followed as we walked through the rooms on the three floors examining furniture that I really did not need or have room for.\u00a0 I felt almost as if I should buy something, anything, as I had taken up so much of her time.\u00a0 At which point we entered the downstairs Salon and I was confronted by a huge buffet\/sideboard.<\/p>\n

It was love at first sight.\u00a0 Over two metres long and almost as high, this dark stained oak dresser with its marble top was as Art Deco as the house itself.\u00a0 Best of all was the huge circular relief wooden plaque on the back depicting two men playing Pelote \u2013 the national game of the Basque country.\u00a0\u00a0 I was immediately transported back to school and being taught about the fiercely independent Pays Basque.<\/p>\n

\u2018No-one wants it,\u2019she said, \u2018the new owners want it gone.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t fit in with their plans.\u00a0 And it\u2019s too big for anyone else.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had plenty of offers for the marble.\u00a0 For a work top.\u00a0 But the rest of it\u2019ll have to be smashed up. Such a shame.\u00a0 It\u2019s been here forever.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s got to be rescued.\u2019 I said horrified about what was about to happen.<\/p>\n

\u2018You can have it for 300 euros\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018A bargain,\u2019 I told my husband, who agreed that he liked it.\u00a0\u00a0\u2018There\u2019s just the problem of moving it and storing it,\u2019 he said.\u00a0\u00a0But I was not going to be fazed by that.\u00a0\u00a0I was safe-guarding History.\u00a0\u00a0What had this buffet witnessed during its 90 odd years of living?<\/p>\n

Marco, who fancied himself as a bit of an Antiques expert, having spent years watching the millions of Antique programmes that litter afternoon TV schedules and which obsess the UK, tried to research where the piece may have come from but he drew a blank, even though there were some words written on the backboard and the plaque was signed.<\/p>\n

I had more pressing problems as I tried to find someone to move it.\u00a0\u00a0The two expats who did that kind of thing locally agreed to move it into a storage unit, but then when they went to look at it backed out. \u2018Why have you bought this heap of junk?\u2019 demanded one, \u2018I ain\u2019t gonna break my back trying to shift that.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another expat was going to take it to pieces so that it could be moved, but then declared that it was impossible.<\/p>\n

In the end, through sheer determination, I employed a proper removal shipping company, who had no problem dissembling the thing, lifting into their van, keeping it in storage and then delivering it here some months later and reassembling it. It cost a small fortune.\u00a0\u00a0I never let anyone know just how much.\u00a0 The original bill turned out to be just for collection, then there was monthly storage, delivery when we finally found our forever home and reassembly.\u00a0 But you can\u2019t put a price on love and I loved my Basque buffet.<\/p>\n

In the meantime Marco\u2019s research and mine had led us nowhere although we had decided that the bottom was older than the top which was clearly very Art Deco.\u00a0\u00a0We were led by a little hand written Menu card dating back to 1908 which the previous owner had given me and which had been in one of the drawers when she took ownership of it.\u00a0\u00a0And although the two pieces match perfectly colour-wise, we decided that perhaps the top had been built specifically to go with the bottom.<\/p>\n

Then a few months ago \u2013 on the eve of Lockdown, I made an amazing discovery.\u00a0 Browsing through a magazine I\u2019d left on top of the buffet, I was distracted by the plaque and the backboard which has the words EZLAN EZYAN engraved on it.\u00a0I googled the words again and to my surprise I found a picture of a Buffet almost identical to mine.\u00a0\u00a0It had sold at Auction in St Jean de Luz, near Biarritz last April for considerably more than even my extortionate removal bills.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_class=”white fullwidthtext”][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]What was more exciting than the value was that it was designed by Benjamin Gomez, who turns out to be one of Bayonne\u2019s most revered sons, an architect, who with his brother Louis is responsible for many of the buildings in Bayonne, Biarritz and the surrounding Department of the Landes.\u00a0 In 2009 the Basque Museum in Bayonne had a major exhibition of the brothers work, including much of their furniture which was designed specifically for the houses they built.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_single_image image=”1443″ img_size=”medium”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_class=”white fullwidthtext”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Indeed, a couple of architectural sketches by Benjamin of a dining room setting which were used as authentication for the buffet that sold were not of that buffet but mine.\u00a0 And so as the nights draw in and life at Maison Lamothe begins to slow down, I am turning to the project I had hoped to begin in the Spring – discovering the buffet\u2019s story.\u00a0 And as they always say on Antiques Roadshow when they discover they are the owners of a missing masterpiece, \u2018It\u2019s definitely not for sale.\u2019<\/p>\n

Michelle Martinez –\u00a0 October 2020<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row el_class=”white fullwidthtext”][vc_column][vc_column_text] The buffet As William Morris once famously said,\u2019 Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.\u2019 Not a bad maxim, but my own would be, \u2018Make your home a haven for treasure with a past and a story to tell.\u2019 Furnishing Maison […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe buffet | Maison Lamothe, Gers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/maisonlamothe.com\/en\/the-buffet\" \/>\n<meta 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