AFP
In the Landes, 1,500 chairs made for Notre-Dame de Paris
In Hagetmau, a small town in the south of Landes, a family carpentry will celebrate its 60th anniversary next year by delivering the most prestigious order in its history: 1,500 chairs for the renovated nave of Notre-Dame de Paris.”We have already done interesting things but here, it really touches on something else”, says Alain Bastiat, manager of the SME chosen to manufacture in “limited and exclusive edition” the seats of the most visited cathedral in the world, ravaged by the fire of April 2019.The company Bastiat Sièges, founded in 1964, is installed on 4,000 m2 on the outskirts of the town formerly “capital of chairs”, as recalled by a 10 meter high example on a flowered roundabout, at the entrance. From the carpenter to the seamstress, it employs 17 highly qualified employees. In the cabinetmaking workshop, under a skylight, sits the prototype made for Notre-Dame: a light solid oak model with clean lines, “visually silent” , signed by a Breton designer, Iona Vautrin.”We needed a simple chair so that it would not take up all the space and obscure the architecture and the rest of the liturgical furniture”, Sylvain explains to AFP. Bastiat, 36 years old, son of Alain and grandson of the founders Joseph and Marcelle, who joined the factory in 2022. Low, she allows the faithful to pray by resting their elbows on the back of the woman placed in front of them.  ;The seat, slightly hollowed out and tilted towards the rear, offers better comfort than the old benches reduced to ashes. The chairs, stackable, can also be connected to each other by a brass fastener.A command which amounts to “hundreds of thousands of euros”, unexpected for Bastiat Sièges and its annual turnover of 1.4 million euros, and which is “long-term”: the partnership with Iona Vautrin will continue in the design of the prie-Dieu and the benches intended for the annex chapels of the cathedral.- Niche -From the native village to the Île de la Cité, the family carpentry followed a long, sometimes bumpy journey. After a golden age of the Landes chair, which began after the Great War, the horizon darkened at the dawn of the 2000s in the face of tough competition from low-cost kit furniture and Asian teak, cheaper than oak. French.When the crisis hits Hagetmau, you have to survive. Bastiat Sièges remains resolutely “anchored in the region” but must diversify its activities, says the representative of the third generation. The SME is approaching designers to seek out “another type of clientele, interior designers, decorators, etc.” and create its own high-end brand, Bosc, or “forest” in Gascon. Here, 90% of the wood worked is French: oak from the forests of Burgundy, Sologne and Ile-de-France. Bastiat Sièges settles into a niche: working solid wood in a semi-industrial manner — which ” few companies in France are capable”, underlines Sylvain Bastiat– while maintaining internal mastery of all know-how, from carpentry to tapestry. In 2018, the Landes SME thus won the label of State of “living heritage company”. In June 2023, Iona Vautrin was chosen by the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Laurent Ulrich, as part of a call for tenders launched by the Revoir association Notre-Dame de Paris, pilot of the renovation project. The artist knew the Bosc brand and then contacted the Hagetmau company. “The flow quickly passed between us,” says Sylvain. “She sent us the 3D of the chair to be made. We didn’t think long, we launched into the adventure,” continues her father. The delivery of the 1,500 chairs will be made in October 2024 for a reopening of the monument planned two months later.rhl/ppy/it