What is French country?

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When I was old enough to drive, I wandered out in the Country Squire wagon, into the country some days, others to our local university town for shoes, or to Mapes furniture store. I realize this last destination is odd for a 16-year-old on her own, in frayed blue jeans, gladiator sandals, and Carole King hair. The store was half way to the university town, a stand alone building not downtown anywhere, on the four-lane thoroughfare running east and west through towns across our state's mid-section. It was a large, sprawling place, laid out in comfortably sized rooms with furniture arranged in home-like groupings. I found rest and inspiration wandering through the cool rooms, empty of people (all but one or two sales clerks who smiled and then ignored me). I breathed in color schemes and fine quality craftsmanship, the shine of mahogany, the luxury of damask, moiré and tapestry and the comfort of polished chintz. All the furniture was traditional, appealing to our conservative small rural community.

This was the era, in the early 1970s, when Colonial anything was making a big comeback, leading up to America's bicentennial in 1976. This callback to our own revolution seems to have also conjured another country's. French country provincial furniture was also all the rage, with its maple framed sofas and headboards with graceful curves and peaks. Mapes furniture store offered a couple of groupings of this style. I don't know how, but intuitively I disliked French country furniture, with a passion, and I all but ignored it. I felt it was fake, in a design sense. I knew it did not look anything like authentic country furniture in a French chateau or cottage. Where was the inspiration coming from, and how did it get here? I especially cringed at the artificial flecks of "wear" and wormholes in the wood. I knew that I would never purchase such a piece of furniture if my life depended on it. I was a fake furniture snob. I would rather own a threadbare velvet sofa from Goodwill than something created to look old.

OK, so now, as a true snob, I will talk about Paris. In 1997 my sister Nancy and I ventured out at the crack of whatever dawn a tourist with jet lag can conjure, and hopped on the Metro north to the edge of the Paris periphery, to the Paris flea market. I bought this 200-year-old French clock for Don at Marché aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, the place some believe to be the original "flea market" -- so named for the beginnings as "rag-and-bone" market stalls whose furniture was infested with bugs. It has come a long way since then, with shops that are priced way out of my league. This clock was priced at about its age: $200. Not bad, I thought.

One of the things that drew me to the clock was its obvious age and experience with critters. While the front and sides of the clock are embedded with brass marquetry, the back side has worm holes. Et voila! The early bird catches the worm.

I spent a couple of days in the French countryside back in 1975. I slept under the stars in the churchyard of the Vézelay Abbey (Basilique Ste-Madeleine) with a handful of fellow students and one rebellious professor. We awoke inside that stone wall with the one-armed cathedral at our backs (like a Sunday School child raising her arm, frozen in time), and a soft valley freckled with poppies spreading out like a calico comforter from the feet of our sleeping bags. This was after dining the night before in a simple dining room in a hostel, with plain wooden tables lined up, showing great wear, windows flung open to the sleepy sun shutting down the valley, we students, lined up in our wooden chairs under bare light bulbs overhead, one large bowl of pottery in front of us, filled first with soup, then salad, then meat and potatoes, carafes of wine centered on the tables like bouquets. Cool and warm, comforting and luxurious.

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