People of Puces: the Antique Sellers of Paris

A new book by Kate van den Boogert reveals the lives and inspirations of passionate antiques sellers at the Marché aux Puces in Paris. Here we meet a selection of them and glimpse some of their favourite items.

Jean-Paul Jurquet

La Salle des Coffres, Marché Dauphine Stand 126

Rare antiques from the Banque de France

Tell us about your profession.

With all antiques, all objects, it’s the antique dealers who create them somehow, who bring them out of history, out of the attics, out of stagnation, and say, ‘Look at this’. They are artists… they are the ones who come up with the story. Maybe if I had never dismantled all the vaults in the Banque de France, they would have been scrapped, or abandoned. It’s as if we exhume stories, put them before mankind. I’ve met people who have come up with incredible things, who have brought entire eras to light.

Is there an image from the past that obsesses or inspires you?

Sometimes when I’m in the banks to dismantle – it could be in the archive rooms, the vaults, or the basement -I imagine the guys who worked there, who built them, who arrived by train, by horse, and who did everything by hand. And when there was no natural light they used carbide lamps, which made smoke, and didn’t really provide much light. They worked six days a week, perhaps 12 hours a day. Some of the things that we manoeuvre quite easily because we have very efficient machines are very heavy-they must have had their own techniques that were also very effective. The tools were hand tools. Everything was certainly extremely well prepared, numbered, pre-assembled in workshops, but still, the conditions were very, very different.

What has, or hasn’t, changed at the Puces?

There are legends; it’s said that once upon a time, more money was made in exports at the Puces than at Renault! But there are plenty of lies. It is a world of dreams and falsehoods too. There are plenty of fabulists. You meet them every week. And there have been seismic shifts in the business. For example, back in the day, people came from all over France, even from abroad, to sell here at Saint-Ouen. All the streets where you now see fake stuff-stuff from China, etc. was where, back then, people came to sell. And then one day, someone invented the professional antiques fair, in Montpellier, Béziers, Avignon, Le Mans, Chartres, etc. So those dealers don’t come any more. Maybe tomorrow, people will buy second-hand, or maybe they won’t. But what is certain is that in my day, you could invent yourself, everything was unscripted. It wasn’t very difficult to make it up as you went along, whereas I think today it’s harder, maybe because people need plans.

Charles Mas

Tombées du Camion, Peulan Marché Vernaison Allée, Stands 29 & 31 @tombeesducamion and @peulan_paris

Vintage and forgotten lots, exclusive stocks from abandoned factories, mass-produced items, little sacred objects, artisanal treasures

What is your expertise, speciality or particularity?

My speciality consists of considering the object not for what it is, but for what it can become. The era, the material, the style are relegated to the rank of anecdote; the object is, for me, only raw material. I am one of the rare dealers to have so little applied knowledge in my field. I am an expert in my ignorance. of the object for what it was. My particularity is to ignore its origin and only consider its destination.

Tell us about your stands.

Stand 29, Peulan: here hangs and rests a non-exhaustive inventory of lamp shades made in France between 1880 and 1980, chosen without any aesthetic or historical bias. The purchasing criteria are impulsive, instinctive but nevertheless demanding. The objective is to allow each of these lamps to combine with others to create or participate in a unique and surprising decor. Stand 31, Tombées du Camion: here you can find everything you didn’t know you were looking for, organised in such a way that it’s impossible to come across it other than by chance. It is a peremptorily poetic inventory of useless, senseless, unusable objects, except by those whose minds know how to adapt to the elusive fantasy of the absurd. But it is also, very prosaically, an invitation to buy with universal appeal.

What inspires you?

Art brut, Dadaism, pataphysics and Madame Michu’s doilies.

Tell us about your profession.

It’s work that provides the opportunity to pass off neuroses as virtues, obsessions as stubbornness and compulsions as talent.

What has, or hasn’t, changed at the Puces?

Over the course of my professional life, the market has been completely revolutionised in terms of supply and demand. What used to sell no longer sells, those who bought are no longer customers, what sells today would never have sold before, and all these changes have attracted people that the Puces once rejected. The Puces has gone from a hub of the antiques market to a funfair straddling the worlds of decoration and entertainment. Despite this, those who drive and energise this market remain generally uncommon types and collectively represent a nonconformist community and way of life.

Is there an element of magic to your work?

Yes, we deliver marvels from oblivion, and by the simple act of buying them we bring them back to life, or perhaps to life.

Eva Steinitz

Mademoiselle Steinitz Alley 1, Stand 23; @evasteinitz

Eclectic selection of antiques and art; Marché Paul Bert all styles and periods

Are you more tradition or revolution?

I’m a big mix. Life, the mess, the classic and the modern, the tradition of craftsmanship and contemporary action. In art, I obviously like what made a mark in its time, broke codes, jostled genres, but I like the ‘followers’ too. I love minds that communicate, shared intelligences, ‘was influenced by…., Art Deco, Art Nouveau. I think I have a particular weakness for transitions-geographical ones for that matter, I like ports of call, borders and, historically, I love everything around 1900 for example, this mixture of insolence, of travel and the pursuit of stories…

Your biggest influence?

Although it was only over a short time in reality, the influence of my father is indisputable. That I broke out on my own I think has a lot to do with him. Because he trusted me and supported me with my desire for individuality very early. And he armed his own sense of taste too, never hesitating (even when it was not yet fashionable) to take risks by mixing styles and eras. It was with him, as a child, that I discovered the professional markets at dawn, the hunt for beauty with a flashlight… My father would have accepted anything I did professionally, but he cannot know (he died when I was 20), that like him, I trace my path revolving around my artistic disposition.

Your favourite tool?

My eye. To get the courage to start out, trusting my eye was what took the longest. It’s exciting to trust it so completely, it’s very creative too. I had a creative bent when I was younger, and I am enormously fulfilled in this sense as a dealer today.

What has, or hasn’t, changed at the Puces?

There is the school of ‘it was better before’. I hear of those Friday mornings when the goods were snatched up by dealers ‘from the back of the truck’. It seems that business was easier, the goods more accessible; I didn’t know this time, but I enjoy the legend. But I’m not nostalgic. The Puces, in my opinion, will always remain the world’s greatest antiques warehouse.

Favourite time of day?

I love to set up. My stand is very small, and each day expresses my state of mind, which I will accentuate if it is cheerful or soften if it is melancholy. Very early on I exuberantly arranged pieces outside my stand. For a while now I have had a beautiful Turkish kilim from the 70s on which I stage each week’s show. Some days, my installation is very quick, I hurry to go and drink a coffee with my friends; other mornings I hang around and move an object at the back of the stand a millimetre to the left then a millimetre to the right a thousand times… This is the poetics of presentation.

From France Today Magazine