Sarreguemines - Earthenware on the garden side

You may not appreciate Sarreguemines earthenware on your table. It's a matter of taste. But don't let that prevent you from visiting the site of the Moulin de la Blies where the furnaces went out in 1969. Last year, it came in 9th position in the program "the favorite monument of the French" on France 2.
Built in 1841 on the Blies, a tributary of the Saar, it was used to prepare the pastes used by potters.

Pebbles from the North Sea were 'bleached' (calcined) before being ground under the millstones of the 'wackenmuhle' or 'knochenmuhle' (bones were also ground there to incorporate into the dough).

The large mill building has become a formidable museum of earthenware techniques. The layout gives the impression that, from one moment to another, the machines are going to start, the designers apply the different patterns. It is the discovery of all the machines and work stations necessary to prepare and shape the pasta until the cooking of the famous "biscuit", a ceramic product cooked at high temperature but not enamelled...

The floor is dedicated to decoration techniques. Stacks of plates in various stages of completion await to be cooked. Throughout the visit, we discover the patterns of the plates of our grandmothers, such as her precious Sunday service with the "Obernai" decor
. On the walls, the portraits of former workers, sound testimonies, make the visit even more lively . The roar of the turbines under the river punctuates the visit.

Sources of inspiration

Outside, on industrial wasteland, a magnificent garden evokes all the sources of inspiration for decorative artists: flowers and plants with sometimes surprising colors and shapes.

Two Japanese wisteria form like a plant gate and their heavy clusters of flowers scent the air. The weeping Japanese cherry trees reveal its delicate flowers, the terrace of tree peonies is bursting with color.

The walk leads to the discovery of different thematic areas. We like to get lost in the mineral and floral labyrinth of the ruins, where the vegetation softens the hardness of the building.

Marvel at the aquatic garden and its plants with large leaves like the gunnères of Brazil. Admire the white garden and its white hydrangeas that bloom on the old potsherd. The walk passes through an astonishing graveyard of millstones, strange tables set up just waiting for their guests...
From one space to another, the atmosphere changes and the informed amateur discovers rare species such as oak in bamboo leaves, the Bohemian olive tree, the alionushka clematis or even the cake tree whose heart-shaped leaves give off, in autumn, a scent of burnt caramel and gingerbread.

Even the "director's vegetable garden" is beautiful to contemplate!
Over the seasons, the garden changes colors, always revealing other wonders of plants. Visually, this garden created by the landscaper Philippe Niez, is enlarged by the natural forest classified as a nature reserve on the other bank of the Blies, in Germany.

This magnificent place of memory is part of the Jardins sans frontières network, which brings together nearly twenty gardens to visit in Moselle (France), Saarland (Germany) and Luxembourg.

A visit to the Moulin de la Blies makes you want to know more about this famous earthenware. Direction the city center.

earthenware museum

Even if you're not a fan, visiting the Technical Museum and its garden encourages you to see the finished products. Head to the Earthenware Museum in the city center.

If you are not a connoisseur, the visit is nice. With a guide (ask for Frédéric!) it becomes fascinating.
Where the disdainful eye of a non-connoisseur falls on majolica peacocks (very fine earthenware covered with colored glazes) or on dogs (“what kitsch”), Frédéric stops.

By showing details, telling the small or the big story of objects, he opens the curtain on an unknown world. All that exotic exuberance, with its Chinese motifs? “It's because daily life was far too banal, we dreamed of distant lands. Hence the representations of Zeus frolicking, views of Pompeii.

Throughout the visit, he stops in front of the various windows to draw attention to curiosities such as this mug with a mustache, the jug for making bubble water, a chocolate pot. Or these funny anthropomorphic pitchers displaying humorous or even caricatured but also historical heads.

“Look at these Fô dogs, guardians of the temples of Buddha. They don't mean anything to you?”..... Not really, except that they are not very beautiful with their monkey head, wing claws and snake tail.... “Think of the old couples who have nothing more to say to each other and who look at each other like earthenware dogs!”
At the latest from then on, Frederic has the full attention of visitors who appropriately rave in Paul de Geiger's magnificent winter garden dating from 1880 with its fountain in the shape of an elephant's head. , its wall panels representing views of Sarreguemines, niches in caves decorated with dolphins...

They learn that the earthenware panels and tiles were also a means of communication. As for the famous “Obernai” service, it was created in Sarreguemines in 1902 by the illustrator Henri Loux. The museum unveils its treasures in the town centre, in the former home of Paul de Geiger, director of the earthenware factories between 1871 and 1914. At the back of the building, an old earthenware kiln bears witness to the time when around thirty constructions reared their conical shape.