00:00In their liquid form, pastels look just like paint.
00:08But Margaret's goal is to drain the moisture,
00:13turning this bright blue blob
00:15into some of the most renowned pastel sticks on the market.
00:19La Maison du Pastel, founded by Henri Rocher,
00:22has been making them the same way for 300 years.
00:28These drawers store hundreds upon hundreds of colors,
00:32with only slight variations between shades,
00:35some only a trained eye can see.
00:38But a premium pastel business is hard to sustain.
00:42Pastels aren't as popular as other fine art mediums,
00:45like oil paint.
00:46So for years, the business struggled
00:48to find and keep its customer base.
00:52Today, its two co-owners work tirelessly
00:55to keep this centuries-old tradition alive,
00:58without sacrificing the quality the Maison is known for.
01:02So how is this niche art business still standing?
01:10Isabelle Rocher, a relative of Henri Rocher,
01:14and Margaret Sayre are the company's only two employees.
01:18They make new pastel sticks a lot like the old ones,
01:21starting with pigment and a binder.
01:24Based on a secret formula that took Rocher and his son
01:28decades to develop.
01:30People like Whistler, Rodin, Degas, Sisley,
01:34who all had issues with the medium.
01:36They were having problems with the powder sticking to the paper.
01:40They were having mold on their works.
01:43So Henri Rocher brought all of his scientific skills
01:47to try and remedy and bring them the product
01:50that they were looking for.
01:52So the base of this new color is cerulean blue,
01:56which is a very classic pigment.
02:00This new color, Caribbean blue,
02:02will join more than 1,900 others the Maison offers.
02:06It's the biggest selection in the company's history,
02:09maybe even the biggest selection of pastels ever.
02:12So adding new colors to the mix
02:14takes a discerning eye and skilled hands.
02:18That's where Margaret comes in.
02:20She's the creative force behind the business.
02:23If the sun's out and we don't feel like working, we don't work.
02:27Or if the sun's out and it inspires us
02:29to make a beautiful color, we do that.
02:34After the initial color is set,
02:36Isabel and Margaret divide it into nine gradations,
02:40from dark to light,
02:42so artists can find the exact shade they need.
02:45So I'm essentially aiming to go between those two.
02:49So we have 1, 2, 3, 4.
02:51This will be number 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
02:54Margaret, I started with one and a half spoons of the dark.
02:58I think I'm going to be making messes already.
03:01Throughout its centuries-long history,
03:04the Maison was renowned for its unmatched range of colors.
03:08This is especially important for pastel artists,
03:11who can't just mix two pastels together
03:14to make a new color before putting it to paper.
03:18You can't blend pastel on a palette like a painter might.
03:22But if you really want to make a line of a color,
03:24you need to have a stick of that color.
03:26That blending needs to happen
03:28at the very beginning of a pastel's life instead.
03:31I'm actually not far from where I want to be,
03:34which is really magical.
03:37I'm going to mix it, really mix it in before I compare.
03:42So I'm actually right now a bit darker than I want to be,
03:45so I'm going to add a bit of white.
03:48If the paste is too stiff,
03:50you can't integrate the white and the color very easily.
03:53But by bringing it to a sort of cake batter consistency,
03:56they merge quite well.
03:59When they're satisfied with the color,
04:01Isabelle scoops the mixture onto a terracotta roof tile to dry.
04:07We use the tiles because that's how it was done in the past,
04:12but the advantage of the tiles is they're porous.
04:16The tiles absorb a bunch of the moisture,
04:18creating less work for Margaret
04:20when she will put the mixture through their antique press.
04:39After the paste has adequately dried,
04:41Margaret wraps it in a cloth
04:43and uses an antique press
04:45to gradually squeeze the moisture from the paste.
04:50This is a tool that was there when Isabelle took over the Maison.
04:55I would imagine it's been used for quite a long time.
04:58Yeah, essentially a lot of what we're surrounded with
05:02are tools and drawers that date back 150 years.
05:08And it's as well, it gives us this sense of âme in French,
05:12I'm not sure how you say that in English,
05:15a spirit, a soul.
05:18Margaret joined Isabelle at the Maison in 2010
05:22after a visit to the shop.
05:24She sent a cold email inquiring about a summer job
05:27and ended up finding her calling.
05:30I would have been happy just cleaning the shop,
05:32so I didn't expect an invitation to come to the house
05:34and make the pastels with her.
05:37The way I see it is I allowed the business to survive
05:42and today I'm giving Margaret a sort of structure
05:46within which she can really make the craft live.
05:53And by the end of this,
05:54we'll probably end up with something more consistent
05:56with modelling clay, cookie dough.
06:00This is one of those points in the process though
06:03where you might want to just sort of muscle it
06:06but you actually have to be quite attentive.
06:09There are certain colours that lose water quite quickly
06:12that you can easily overpress.
06:14And it's always more complicated adding water back.
06:37Ah, that's better.
06:49Is it?
06:51Okay, I'm coming over with the paste.
06:54Hand-rolling each pastel allows them to add more pigment
06:58to the mix than if they used a machine.
07:03We tolerate certain consistencies
07:05that machines can't tolerate.
07:07We end up with colours that are either more vibrant
07:10or deeper or more concentrated.
07:14I think it's really important to be able to
07:16make sure that you're getting the right colour
07:18and that you're getting the right consistency.
07:20It's always been the phase of the making that I prefer.
07:24It's sort of the moment when you're actually forming them
07:27so you're starting to see it happening
07:30and becoming a pastel.
07:34When you don't know how to roll them,
07:36you can end up with pancakes.
07:39The first pastels I made just didn't look like anything.
07:42They were all weird shapes and they were flat.
07:46They were all weird shapes and they were flat.
07:50They had holes in them.
08:03The cutting with the large blade,
08:05I believe that was also the invention of Henri Gaucher
08:11to the traditional process because I think in the past
08:14they used to cut the sticks once they were dry,
08:17which took forever.
08:19So it's cutting the ends in one fell swoop.
08:26When Isabelle took over the company
08:28for her aging ants in 2000,
08:30she held on to many of the tools and techniques
08:33that Gaucher developed in his day.
08:37Cinq, quatre-vingt-six.
08:44And then we let them hair dry,
08:46usually for about three weeks.
08:49Kind of how the season depends on the colors.
08:53But there was also plenty about the languishing business
08:55that needed to change.
08:59When she took over, the Maison had next to no inventory
09:02and hardly any customers to sell it to.
09:06My great-aunts were in their 80s when I took over,
09:09which means that for the last 20 years they hadn't made much.
09:12They were very secretive,
09:14so they hadn't tried to generate new customers.
09:18So essentially their customer base,
09:20as the artists had grown older and died,
09:23they hadn't been replaced.
09:25So she spent her first two years regenerating supply.
09:29I'd managed to reconstitute about 250 or 300 colors.
09:34Before focusing on demand.
09:40The Maison serves what's known as a niche market.
09:43Imagine the market as a pie.
09:45While a mass-market company like Crayola
09:48tries to carve the biggest slice
09:50by appealing to as many people as possible,
09:53businesses serving niche markets
09:55cut smaller, specialty slices
09:58that appeal to a specific type of customer.
10:02A huge reason for Rocher's success
10:05was how he collaborated with artists
10:07to create the colors they needed.
10:10And Isabelle was determined to do the same.
10:13The most difficult thing for me
10:15was that I had no art background at all.
10:17I had no artistic background either.
10:20I didn't draw, I didn't paint.
10:22So when I was talking to the artists,
10:24I felt I was talking a different language.
10:28One of these artists is Claude Barré-Allard.
10:32I've known her since the day I took over.
10:35I think that the first color I made
10:37was a blue indigo, an indigo blue
10:39that she'd been waiting for for two years.
10:42Did she tell you that she was creating colors for me?
10:46Yes, I did.
10:48That makes me very proud, for sure.
10:51That means that they like
10:53what I can do with their colors, for sure.
10:57They serve me, I serve them.
10:59It's an exchange, as in life.
11:04Claude picked up pastels later in her career,
11:07after spending most of it working with oil paints.
11:13I bought the pastel Rocher very slowly in the beginning,
11:17and I discovered that I sold much more
11:20with pastel Rocher
11:22because the work became much better
11:25because the quality of peanuts was wonderful.
11:32Historically, pastels have taken a back seat
11:35to more popular mediums like oil paints.
11:39You have waves of it being used extensively,
11:42and then it goes back into being a secondary medium
11:45that people only use to do basic drawings, etc.
11:49We are aware that it comes and goes,
11:53and at the moment we feel that a few artists
11:56are really picking up the technique
11:58and doing really serious things with it,
12:01not just preparatory drawings.
12:06I walked into this thinking,
12:08there are just maybe a handful,
12:10or maybe ten artists in France
12:12that really need the pastels.
12:14If I can multiply that
12:16by the number of countries around the world,
12:18I should be able to make a living out of it.
12:21Isabel inherited an archive of century-old pigment,
12:25some of which is still usable.
12:34Sometimes, Margaret can even reach into the company's past
12:38to make new pastel colors.
12:42Oh, that's beautiful.
12:44That's a really beautiful rocher, actually.
12:48Actually, I'm processing this in real time.
12:51This pigment, this is a genuine discovery.
12:56Well, I kind of want to see what kind of pastel this makes.
13:00I imagine because it's an ochre,
13:02it will make an agreeable texture.
13:04I want to compare this to ochres
13:06that we already have in the range
13:08to see if I'd actually kind of...
13:11Do you mind if I go get a piece of paper and a bit of white?
13:15Sure.
13:16While much of the process remains the same
13:19as when Rocher ran things,
13:21what Isabel and Margaret really hold on to
13:24is how he thought about the business.
13:27What really makes our pastels what they are
13:30is his formulas and how they marry
13:32to the craftsmanship of the artisan that he met.
13:47I know that Margaret has in her head
13:50several other ranges that she wants to bring in,
13:53and on paper she already knows
13:56that one day we will go above 2,000.
14:00But essentially, as long as we keep having people
14:03coming to the shop asking for colors they don't have,
14:06we're going to be bringing in new things.
14:16© BF-WATCH TV 2021
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