Tomorrow is our biggest national holiday le quatorze juillet, the 14th of July also known abroad as Bastille Day. We don't call it Bastille Day, but when I lived in New York for some reason the French community did.
So naturally I've decided to celebrate France's abolishing feudalism by going furniture hunting. I'm a big supporter of what we call associations in French. An association is usually a charity run by regular people (sometimes by executives depending on the association's wealth and status), that somehow reaches out to the community to raise money for their cause. Emmaus is probably one of my favourites.
Emmaus was started by the Abbé Pierre in 1949. Abbé Pierre was pretty bad ass. He was a member of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris and ran an underground that smuggled Jewish people into Switzerland after learning how to make fake papers and passports just for his new cause.
After the war Abbé Pierre went into politics, but his real accomplishment is Emmaus. Named for the village where Jesus appeared to two men who gave him shelter and hospitality after the resurrection in the Bible, Emmaus' goal was to raise money to construct housing for the homeless by selling used goods donated by the public.
"Emmaus, it's a little like the wheelbarrow, the shovels and the pickaxes coming before the banners. A sort of social fuel derived from salvaging defeating men.
Realising he'd need funds to start his association, Abbé Pierre went on a then popular game show and won 256,000 francs (about 40,000 euros if directly converted into today's money). It was because of his winnings that when the deadly winter of 1954 hit and the homeless were dying in the streets, Abbé Pierre appealed to the people in a famous speech. And the French heard him to the tune of 500 million francs in donations (Charlie Chaplin gave 2 million).
I always tell people to check out Emmaus even if they're on France on vacation before heading to the flea markets. Not only can you find the one off thing you might not find elsewhere (brainwave reading machine anyone? 10 euros), you can always find things that flea markets will sell but at a fraction of the cost. I've found real silverware, Limogues tea sets, and lots of high-quality furniture.
Most of the people who work at Emmaus are people who have been helped by the association and are paid by the association for their skills either selling, repairing, stocking, or doing administrative work. So all your money goes to help locals. And that is what an association is supposed to be about.
There's a great new boutique for Emmaus at the 104 art space in the 18e, a massive warehouse of an Emmaus at Metro Pierre et Marie Curie in Ivry, and one that is really quite full of treasures in Seine-et-Marne, except that it's not exactly easy to get there.
What have you found at Emmaus that turned out to be a treasure?
So naturally I've decided to celebrate France's abolishing feudalism by going furniture hunting. I'm a big supporter of what we call associations in French. An association is usually a charity run by regular people (sometimes by executives depending on the association's wealth and status), that somehow reaches out to the community to raise money for their cause. Emmaus is probably one of my favourites.
Emmaus was started by the Abbé Pierre in 1949. Abbé Pierre was pretty bad ass. He was a member of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris and ran an underground that smuggled Jewish people into Switzerland after learning how to make fake papers and passports just for his new cause.
After the war Abbé Pierre went into politics, but his real accomplishment is Emmaus. Named for the village where Jesus appeared to two men who gave him shelter and hospitality after the resurrection in the Bible, Emmaus' goal was to raise money to construct housing for the homeless by selling used goods donated by the public.
"Emmaus, it's a little like the wheelbarrow, the shovels and the pickaxes coming before the banners. A sort of social fuel derived from salvaging defeating men.
Realising he'd need funds to start his association, Abbé Pierre went on a then popular game show and won 256,000 francs (about 40,000 euros if directly converted into today's money). It was because of his winnings that when the deadly winter of 1954 hit and the homeless were dying in the streets, Abbé Pierre appealed to the people in a famous speech. And the French heard him to the tune of 500 million francs in donations (Charlie Chaplin gave 2 million).
I always tell people to check out Emmaus even if they're on France on vacation before heading to the flea markets. Not only can you find the one off thing you might not find elsewhere (brainwave reading machine anyone? 10 euros), you can always find things that flea markets will sell but at a fraction of the cost. I've found real silverware, Limogues tea sets, and lots of high-quality furniture.
Most of the people who work at Emmaus are people who have been helped by the association and are paid by the association for their skills either selling, repairing, stocking, or doing administrative work. So all your money goes to help locals. And that is what an association is supposed to be about.
There's a great new boutique for Emmaus at the 104 art space in the 18e, a massive warehouse of an Emmaus at Metro Pierre et Marie Curie in Ivry, and one that is really quite full of treasures in Seine-et-Marne, except that it's not exactly easy to get there.
What have you found at Emmaus that turned out to be a treasure?
