Stories Collected While Living in France
Every now and then I come across an antique at the brocante that I do not know what it is.
Do you know what it is, what it was used for? If so write it in the comment section, or if you do not know what it was used for, make up a response in the comment section. The first one to guess correctly will receive a gift as well as the most creative response.
My guess: an ancient flower arranging device.
I appears to be a bread basket, maybe I just want bread right now but that what my guess is.
For lobster?
My guess too, lobster trap?
crab pots? fish baskets?
Basket for catching crabs or sea urchins.
2nd guess… Basket for displaying fish or sea food at market. Baskets can be submerged in water and there’s enough room in the weave of the basket at the top to reach in and pull out the fish or whatever.
It looks like the baskets they put porcelain bowls in in China and japan…
Market baskets for live geese, ducks etc. Probably from the Dordogne region.
Well that’s clever. I never would have thought of that!
This is the form used when making a wig for a giantess. Giantesses do not like to sit still for very long so the wig-makers had to come up with a substitute for the giantess’s heads. They had these shapes woven and they are used to hold the mesh steady as the wig hair is sewn onto the mesh. The wig-makers are glad they do not have to spend hours smelling giantess breath and the giantesses are glad not to have to sit still for hours…
For capturing the wild, runaway grapes to take to the grape stomping event.
Is it a lobster trap?
Old crab or lobster pot that divers used?
Basket to take chickens to market?
A fish trap? One that lets small fishes through (to grow further) and only the big fish are caught.
Oh, or the wooden remains of a demijohn, where the bottle has been destroyed… (but there are too many of them?)
I have no idea but my hubby’s guess is that they are feeding baskets for cows or horses and get filled with hay.
Lobster trap?
The words “urchin,” “wild” and “runaway” combined in my twisted mind to imagine these used to hold small children while their mothers worked the fields. But they wouldn’t work for children or small animals, who would easily knock them over.
I also considered they were molds for giant cupcakes and fell out of fashion due to the difficulty of making muffin liners of that size.
However, as Claudia says, they are stands for carboys or dames jeannes, for making wine, beer or cider, or for storing olive oil or even acids. As the bottles were made of blown glass, they weren’t very flat or stable and were put into these corbeilles to keep them from tipping over. They could be further protected, from temperature change or shock, with straw or moss.
chicken or other live game transport
My first guess is that they are baskets that once held large glass bottles for wine.”Carboy baskets” you would line them with straw or excelsior and keep the round bottomed bottle in them to age/store the wine
Containers for giant cupcakes. 🙂
A jail for geese being prepared for foie gras.
Lettuce basket
Is this possibly a trap for fish or lobster?
Victoria
Apple basket
Looks like a carrier for a large jug, eg.. wine for everyone!
Bicycle basket to carry home live game or food from market?
Oh no, Taste of France took my idea of giant cupcakes. I think they were lined with giant cupcake papers and baked in the sun.
I didn’t see her comment until after your post…
🙁
A basket to carry clothes when going to the river to wash them.
Women carried the baskets on their heads. ?
A market chicken cage?
Defective alien chastity belts. They had already mass produced them before realizing the design flaw.
Was going to say fishing traps of some sort but I’m having so much fun reading the comments why bother!!
Perhaps a cage for transporting chickens or rabbits to market?
In the NW coast of the US the repurposes of old objects would use these for lampshades or hanging lanterns……really!!
I’m surprised that you found so many of the brioche forming baskets in one place because once a sufficient amount of dough has risen to fill up the basket, it’s immediately tossed into a huge stone oven to bake and the wooden baskets usually go up in flames and disappears leaving only the basket’s markings on the brioche loaf. These gigantic brioches are created for especially large families in rural areas of France to enjoy with sweet butter and marmalade. Or merely one very hungry Francophile…
je suppose, c ´est pour transporter la vollaile au marche´.
salutations parfumées Tina
la volaille vivante biensûr 😉
Boulangerie baguette baskets
Joan you did get the “giantess” part right
but they are actually forms for a seamstress
to use to make giant bras.
Cupcake mold for the Jolly Green Giant
After my husband gets through washing them, they will be small enough to hold a small bouquet of flowers for a small kitchen table. (Can you tell we have had a recent episode when someone chose to wash and then dry a favorite sweater of mine?)
Container for transporting large glass jugs of wine, safely, for one dare not spill a delicious drop.
To carry the laundry out into the garden on a windy day.
Second guess to be used at day care for naughty child offenders.
Antique Lobster traps, but now it might give you a case of food poisoning or lead poisoning if used for that! A tetanus shot too! Oh but what we could do decoratively!
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