From 'Trucs' to Treasures

During the summer I visited a brocante in Cognac and bought an elegant French silver plated ladle.  The vendor informed me that it was a louche à sauce (a sauce ladle) and I happily took it home with me along with some other finds and set about cleaning it up.  

I love cleaning and researching the trucs I buy and find it incredibly satisfying when an object begins to show itself in all it's glory. This particular find not only did that but the famous French maker's mark of Gombault soon became clear.  

The clear maker's mark Gombault

Gombault was a renowned silversmith during the Belle Epoque period in France where he earned himself the nickname 'Monsieur Absinthe' because he specialised in making drinking paraphernalia for the rituals associated with the notorious drink, Absinthe. 

Beautifully crafted and in super condition

Art Nouveau (Belle Epoque) advertising poster

Absinthe, coined 'The Green Fairy' was later banned in its original form because it was considered not only to be dangerous to the health because of it's sheer alcoholic strength but also to possess hallucinogenic properties.

This stunning poster on the left belies the darker side of the drink but is undeniably a fabulous example of the creative style of the time conjuring up images of the famous Moulin Rouge and bringing to mind the decadence and bohemian artistry of the era.

Being a bit of a history buff I always like to thoroughly research my trucs and I enjoy passing on as much knowledge as I can to my customers in the hope of transforming an often simple inanimate object into something of a treasure.

Researching my trucs can be not only  frustrating but also very time consuming and in this case I was getting very tired of trawling endlessly on the internet and was just about to pack it in when I got incredibly lucky and stumbled across two very interesting things.

The first find was a copy of a couple of pages from Gombault's catalogue showing the very same ladle which as it turned out was not a sauce ladle at all but (to my slightly absurd overexcited delight... shrill squeal!) a punch ladle (cuiller à punch) along with its accompanying original price list (I wonder if they made punch from Absinthe at the time or would that have been considered to be sacrilegious?!!)

There it is at the top of the page the second from the left

Listed by the number 505 and priced at 7 francs

The other interesting thing I came across was an article by the British newspaper 'The Express' that claimed that experts have uncovered the forgotten secrets of the original absinthe recipe and that they were bringing it back.

Well I don't know about you but if it's true and the original Absinthe is back I will have to give it a try otherwise I will feel I have not satisfactorily completed my research and that would never do!!