Visiting the Towns of St. Leonard de Noblat and St. Junien (Limousin, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Towns of St. Léonard de Noblat and St. Junien (Limousin, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After visiting the Adrien Dubouché Porcelain Museum in downtown Limoges (France), my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I drove to Aixe-sur-Vienne to buy porcelain at a store that specialized in white porcelain at the time on the Vienne River.

It was fun to visit the Maison de la Porcelan with Florence.  She liked all the dishes I showed her and described them as “C’est beau.”

We bought several pieces of white porcelain and went to the town of St. Léonard de Noblat.  The town is named after the hermit Léonard, who lived in the forest nearby.

The church in Saint Léonard de Noblat has many sculpted beasts on its sculpture outside meant to inspire awe and respect for God.

The Church was not empty.  I sat and let Florence practice pulling down the kneestand and pray a few times.

We went back to the great-aunt’s house for more vegetable appetizers and a charcuterie selection of Serrano ham from Spain, Italian prosciutto, and French rillettes with baguettes and bread.

I fell asleep as I went to bed that night.

The next morning, we went to the market in St. Junien.  The market sold cute bunnies.  Florence and I played with the soft bunnies while the vendor gave me rabbit recipes.

The town of St. Junien came to life when the hermit St. Junien began to heal the sick with water in the 6^th century.  Most people drank wine, because it was cleaner than well water due to it production methods.  He may have taught people to boil water to kill bacteria.

St. Junien like St. Léonard de Noblat searched for his soul in the woods much like Jesus and holy hermits did in the Middle East when they went to the desert.  There was a large monastery in St. Junien dedicated to the Saint.

I imagined how festive the town must look during its “ostentations,” which take place every seven years.  The “ostentations” are a series of processions of saints’ relics that are held in Limoges and its neighboring towns.

During the “ostentations” in St. Junien, people wear costumes and parade down the main street covered with leaves to look like the forest.  I read this information to Laurent as we walked through the market from the Michelin touring guide.

We bought strawberries and chocolate cake to bring to Laurent’s cousin’s house, who had invited us for lunch.

Our host told us that he spoke a “patois” or dialect during lunch.  This patois could be either the langue d’oc of the South of France or the langue d’oeil of the North of France.  The Limousin is the linguistic dividing line in France between those two dialects.

The name of both languages signifies “yes” in those languages and might make reference to swearing fealty to a medieval seigneur.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Visiting the French Limousin Region and the Limoges Porcelain Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the French Limousin Region and the Limoges Porcelain Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On a long holiday weekend for the Catholic holiday of Ascension, my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I set out for the French Limousin region in the South of France.

The French Limousin is full of forests and has soil that is rich in kaolin, used to make porcelain dishes such as those from Bernardaud and Haviland.

We passed by oversized, reddish brown Limousin cows lounging by the Vienne River.  These cows are called Limousin cows.  I wondered if Limousin cows were at the origin for the name “Limousine.” 

Golden Limousin oak trees lined our way.  The wood from these trees is used to make barrels for aging cognac.

The houses in the Limousin had rose- to clay-colored stone topped off with the orange, half-moon tiles you see on the Mediterranean Seaboard.

At a small village along a country highway, we turned in to a cluster of houses where several members of Laurent’s extended family lived.

We ate lunch at Laurent’s great-aunt’s home, who brought out champagne and flutes before we ate a lunch of several vegetable appetizers, a salad with smoked salmon and eggs, and a selection of cheese served with butter and baguettes.

After lunch, we set out along the Vienne River again and went to St. Junien where we would be staying at a local hotel called Le Boeuf Rouge, the Red Cow.

The name must have inspired us to go to McDonalds for dinner.  There was a crowd at McDonalds, pronounced “McDough” in French slang.  In Detroit, we called McDonalds “MickyD’s.”

Next morning, we went to the Leclerc grocery store to buy our breakfast.  French grocery stores bake a lot of their own croissants and baguettes, so this is not really a second-class dining option.

The aroma of baked bread made the supermarket smell wonderful.  We bought cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and baguettes and made hot chocolate in our hotel room.

I gussied Florence up for lunch at the great-aunt’s.  We had the same lunch as the day before minus the champagne.  It was a delicious menu the second day as well.

After lunch, Laurent, toddler Florence, and I went to the Adrien Dubouché Museum.

This Museum holds large porcelain, faience, and earthenware collections.  The basic differences between these kinds of tableware follow:

-porcelain – ceramic made by heating clay with kaolin at high temperatures

-faience – tin-glazed earthenware pottery like Faenza ware from Northern Italy

-earthenware – pottery made of fired clay and glazed, making it waterproof

The discovery of kaolin in 1768 in France made it possible to make hard porcelain like that found in the Far East.

Originally, Sèvres outside Paris was the main location for making porcelain, but after the First Empire, Limoges was chosen as the principal manufacturing site, because it had kaolin as well as wood for furnaces.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Making a Porcelain Pilgrimage to Aixe-sur-Vienne (Outside Limoges, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making a Porcelain Pilgrimage to Aixe-sur-Vienne (Outside Limoges, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Every time my family heads towards the South of France on vacation, we stop at Aixe-sur-Vienne located west of Limoges to shop for porcelain.  Porcelain is pricy, but the Maison de la Porcelaine allows you to buy pieces direct from the factory, which keeps prices lower than you would pay for porcelain on rue du Paradis in Paris.

Aixe-sur-Vienne is a visual treat.  You can walk along the Vienne River in a park by the Maison de la Porcelaine and visit the town, which lies along a pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostella in Spain according to the France This Way website.

The Maison de la Porcelaine is the main tourism draw in town, though.  The store offers free factory tours (in French) with most of their commentary summarized under links to porcelain’s history and manufacture on their webpage, which is available in English.

The story of porcelain in the Limousin is a story of kaolin.  According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, kaolin is a “soft white clay used in the making of porcelain.”  The clay is named after the Chinese hill where it was mined called kao-ling.  The Chinese began to use kaolin to create porcelain during the T’ang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907).

The Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama (1460 or 1469 – 1524) helped create the craze for porcelain among emperors and heads of state when he opened the route to India and China after 1498.

According to the Maison de la Porcelaine website, Portugal, Holland, England, and France all competed for the right to import porcelain, which had become a highly sought after luxury good.

While they were importing Chinese porcelain, European countries were also trying to make their own versions of porcelain during the Renaissance.  The Italians and French came closest to succeeding with their “soft paste” porcelain.  Soft paste porcelain was not durable and lacked the sheen and luminosity of Chinese porcelain.

The Encyclopedia Britannica credits a French Jesuit missionary with introducing Europe to kaolin as the ingredient that made Chinese porcelain special around 1700.

In 1707, a German alchemist named Böttger discovered a deposit of kaolin at Meissen outside modern-day Dresden, Germany.  He made the first “hard paste” porcelain with this clay.  Saxony, where Meissen is located, was able to guard the secret of porcelain fabrication by draconian means until 1767 when “hard paste” porcelain was produced in Limoges.

A large-scale porcelain industry was begun in Limoges in 1771 under the direction of the minister Turgot.  This marked the birth of porcelain production as we know it in Limoges today.

Limoges porcelain is made with kaolin (55%), quartz (20%), and feldspar (25%).  It goes through at least two firings, usually three, to obtain the sheen we associate with Limoges porcelain.

The last time we were at the Maison de la Porcelaine, we bought a teapot, chocolate pot, cheese plates, and a butter dish.  The plates had been made with a jollying or jiggering process used to make round objects on a spinning base.  The teapot, chocolate pot, and butter dish were all made with a casting process whereby the “paste” is pour into a hollow mold leaving a thin layer of paste on the surface of the mold.

There is a difference in shape among a teapot, chocolate pot, and a coffee server.  Teapots are usually short and round, but if they are tall, they should have a wide and round base.  The spout is found midway up the side of the pot.

Chocolate pots are tall and somewhat slender with a small spout at the top.

Coffee servers are tall and slender.  Coffee server spouts are placed at the bottom of a pot to retain the heat.

I have included a photo of a tall teapot.  I use a moka pot for coffee.  (Another blog topic!).

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Photo by Ruth Paget

Ruth Paget Selfie