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The Awakened, the association of descendants of the gentlemen glassmakers of Ariège, Tarn

The Awakened, the association of descendants of the gentlemen glassmakers

of Ariège, Tarn
Michel Begon March 1992

In August 1975, attended by nearly Gabre, on rocky ridges of Plantaurel between the Mas d'Azil and Foix, a family event to which the television was good enough to give a national sensation by issuing "On appointment your ancestors, "which lasted 90 minutes. It was the meeting of some five hundred descendants of the gentlemen glassmakers of Ariege, Mountain and Black Forest Grésigne, about a century after the extinction of the last glass furnace that blazed from 1715 to the factory points in the valley of the Salat in Couserans. The offspring could be even better surrounded by the Charter of Sommières (Gard) was recognized in 1445 the privilege of glass art to some noble family of Languedoc, that this privilege until 1789 had turned into a monopoly of glassware Ariege to benefit the three families of Robert, Verbizier (or Verbigier, Berbigier) and Grenier (or Granier), finally these three families had practiced until the twentieth century a strong inbreeding which was, if not closed caste, at least in others. Some monographs have already reconstructed the genealogies and lineages until the XVth century, to find most of the heirs of the three names.

The origin of these families is controversial. Are they from the banks of the Rhine in stages and have they been ennobled by St. Louis in the Crusades, as would the legend? Nothing is less certain. They would Auvergne through forests of Albigenses and Upper Languedoc? In any case, their presence in the Ariege is surely attested only from 1529 to Gabre (Mas d'Azil) for Robert, 1550 and Bousquet (La Bastide Sérou) for Grenier, from 1554 to Fabas ( Holy Cross Volvestre) for Verbizier, where the availability of forests, sand and vacant spaces allowed their industry. Doubtless they had previously installed, perhaps to fill the voids demographic dug by plagues of 1350 and the Hundred Years War, the call is said Alain d'Albret, grandfather of Joan Albret. Should we then assign to the protection of the Gascon dynasty conversion to the Reformation of much of their nationals? Ultimately, that's a lot of questions that historians of the three families working to solve.

Today, the legend passed on by word of mouth for centuries and embellished distorts the historical facts as we do not know further unravel the false from true.

The artisanal mining of these families extended over several forested areas in the far south-west trade between them on foot or on horseback were frequent: Aude, Tarn, Quercy, Perigord, Bazadais, Agen, High Auvergne, Lot and Cantal. But it is on Black Mountain as archaeological excavations have revealed the most beautiful glass furnaces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the Ariege, the investigative work remains to be done, which is all the more surprising that the core of the three families remained in the Ariege, especially near the Mas of Azil or Fabas in family homes, often dating from the seventeenth century. The Industrial Archaeology of France is still in its infancy!

Each facility included the oven to bake the glass paste and oven cooling parts prepared, in addition to farm buildings and sheds. We find these furnaces often almost intact with the crucibles of sandstone that accompanied them, among heaps of broken glass and some shards. The manufacturing gave bottles, decanters, drinking glasses or ordinary urinals, as well as precious art objects such as cups, Sweetie, vials perfume, glass rods, thimbles. Essentially, it consisted of blown glass with cane, as we see always in Murano near Venice.

Since the Renaissance, the three families closely tied to the history of Pays d'Oc, Foix and Couserans, which later form the department of Ariege. They provided military leaders with armed Protestant and contributed to the defeat of the King of France to the Protestants, the headquarters of the Mas d'Azil in 1625 by Marshal Thémines. They helped a lot too, and perhaps even more than coal, to deforest pre-Pyrenees, to the chagrin of the administration of water and forests to feed their voracious wood fuel stoves. They worried many political authorities in how they isolate themselves in the woods, and they thought not without reason, including plotting, so much so that the assembly of the nobility in 1789 would not accept their first representatives from among its members, on the grounds that they were homeless. They gave the Empire General Verbigier St. Paul, and Grenier Cassagnac distinguished themselves during the Second Empire in the press and of opinion duels journalists. But the abolition of privileges dealt a severe blow to their craft, winning that competition in the glass coals of northern France came to complete between 1850 and 1880, helping the railroad. On furnaces abandoned, vegetation then resumed his duties.

The descendants of these gentlemen glassmakers, despite their dispersion across France and even abroad, have formed an association in the 1901 Act to perpetuate the memory and tradition. They took the name "The Awakened" to remind the awake, ie the relighting of the furnaces at the fall season when, after collections made, farmers again became available for cutting and carting wood, making the silica sand, blown glass convey to the markets. The association has its registered office at Mas d'Azil, with Miss Jane Sivadon, a descendant of Verbizier Latreyte; it publishes or republishes the works of history to the attention of amateurs, exhibited his collection of antique glass in the museum of the Mas 'Azil, publishes a circular four-monthly and conducts its hearings each year, usually in some pretty site Ariège (Mas d'Azil, Gabre, La Bastide de Sérou, Laroque Olmes, Ussat les bathroom or near Saint-Pierre Ust). His links with the Paris Ariégeois or Friends of St. Lizier Couserans and are firmly tied with several bi-or tri-memberships.