European Heritage Days 2022

On the occasion of the european heritage days 2022The museum welcomes you free of charge on weekend of 17-18 Septemberfrom 9am to 12.30pm and from 2pm to 6pm. Free activities are planned within the establishment on these two days. Some of them can be booked by phone at 02.98.98.83.99. You can also consult the programme of Loctudy on this particular weekend via the pdf below.

The Sardine Affair

Erick Sanka at a performance of the Sardine Affair

On 10 August, as part of the summer entertainment programme "Les Mercredis, c'est Loctudy!", the town will have the pleasure of welcoming the famous professional entertainer Erik Sanka. The latter will come to perform his play "L'Affaire Sardines" which earned him the distinction of Street Arts Icon by the magazine Télérama. The performance will take place at the bottom of the rue du port from 10pm to 11pm. This is how he presents his play on his website website :

"What if "Les Sardines" was a town full of history and Cook a Corsican gendarmerie captain? The protagonist of the case advocates a more scientific justice. Using sardine tins and slides, he reconstructs the world in just 42 minutes. Russian submarines, princesses who are not from Monaco, evidence by nine where we split hairs... This final conference says it all so that everything is said and so that you have nothing more to say.

Erick Sanka at a performance of the Sardine Affair

The Sardine Affair

A play by Erick Sanka

Avec-ou-Sanka Company

Wednesday 10 August 2022

From 22:00 to 23:00

At the bottom of the rue du Port in Loctudy

Free access

A growing archive

The magazine "La sardine du Croisic. Petit poisson, grande histoire", as well as the magazine published in 2004 by the Institut CGT d'histoire sociale de la Bretagne on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the strike of the Douarnenez sardine workers, were given to us by a kind Mrs Béatrice Verney, president of the Société des Amis du Croisic. This magazine was published last September, at the same time as the Musée de la conserverie de Loctudy officially opened its doors to the general public. An exhibition on the theme of the magazine opens today at the Maison du Patrimoine in Le Croisic and will be open to the public free of charge on Wednesdays and Sundays from 4 to 6.30pm until 4 September 2022.

The magazine on the 80th anniversary of the Douarnenez sardine workers' strike was offered to the association of the Friends of the Loctudy cannery by Robert Salaun, departmental president of the CGT Institute of Local History of Brittany, and Gaston Balliot, a Loctudist passionate about social history. This review was published in the context of the symposium devoted in November 2004 to the 80th anniversary of the victorious struggle of the Douarnenez sardine workers.

Many thanks to our generous donors. Their donations will be used to enrich the museum's archival collection.

Engraving on cans

During the summer months of July and August, we will have the pleasure of welcoming the artist Eddy Dumont to the museum. Originally from Normandy, this photography and intaglio print enthusiast moved to Loctudy three years ago with the intention of opening his own intaglio printmaking workshop. He discovered rotogravure in 2014 with Phillipe Martin, who was teaching printing techniques at the Rouen School of Fine Arts. The artist was very quickly seduced by the complexity of this ancient photographic reproduction technique, which allows him to apprehend his shots differently, both in terms of nuances and textures. His search for new exploitable materials led him to try intaglio engraving. Simple, fast and accessible to all, it is this technique that the artist proposes to make discover to the families, this summer, in the enclosure of the Museum of the Cannery around a workshop of initiation to the engraving on lid of sardine cans.

To discover Eddy's work, go to his account Facebook @EddyDumontHélioFecltrois or on its account Instagram @atelier.obraz

Introduction to sardine can engraving workshop by Eddy Dumont
Target group: families (mixed adults & children from 6 years old)
Duration: 2 hours
Number of places limited to 8 participants
Price: 3€/child and 13€/adult

A colourful travel diary

During the summer months of July and August, we will have the pleasure of welcoming the illustrator Chloé Fraser to the museum. A graduate of the École supérieure des arts décoratifs de Strasbourg, the artist, who lives in Pont-l'Abbé, published her first children's book in 2015. In 2021, together with former art teacher Solenne Roy, she created the association "La Balade illustrée", which offers artistic workshops on painting, engraving, illustrations with different techniques and monotype for children from 4 years old, teenagers and adults. The association also offers art courses during the holidays, as well as outdoor sketching trips. It is on her favourite theme, the "illustrated walk", that the artist will be working this summer with the museum to help children create a little travel diary around their visit to the Loctudy cannery.

To discover Chloé Fraser's work, please visit Facebook @LABaladeillustreethe page Instagram @labaladeillustree or the website: https://www.labalade.org/labo

Workshop to create a travel diary illustrated by Chloé Fraser
Target group: children aged 6 to 11
Duration: 2 hours
Number of places limited to 8 children (without accompanying parent)
Price: 3€/child

A multi-faceted plate

This ceramic plate was made in the artistic earthenware workshop of Georges Dreyfus in Moret-sur-Loing (Seine-et-Marne department, Île-de-France region), which operated from 1890 to 1936.
Georges Dreyfus was a professional in tableware and ceramic arts. From his workshop came a varied production, carefully decorated by a wide variety of artists whom the art dealer called upon for artistic collaborations.

Many pieces from the workshop were intended for table service, such as dishes, plates and tureens that Georges Dreyfus sold in his Parisian shop on rue du Paradis.
Commissioned by the Amieux brothers, two famous canners from Nantes known for their pioneering and ingenious advertising strategies, this polychromatic earthenware plate was made using the barbotine technique.
The slip decoration consists in adding relief on a pottery. Here this relief takes the form of four elegant sardines which frame the emblematic poem of the Amieux Frères company.
The marli, i.e. the peripheral part of the plate constituting the slightly inclined crown, is here carefully decorated with Breton landscapes (lighthouse, boat, biniou player, couple of dancing Bretons) as well as the slogans of the Amieux Frères company written in phylactery, i.e. in the spirit of medieval calligraphy.

The copy we now have was donated by Pierre Quillivic, former technical director of the Paul Chacun cannery and technical and production manager of the Cobreco (Arok) cannery, and current municipal councillor in charge of issues relating to the Loctudy cannery museum. We thank him warmly for this donation.

A sculpture in front of the house

On the windowsill of the dining room, you will have the opportunity to admire the sculpture Oceano nox of the self-taught artist Jean-Pierre Gendra. Since his first encounter with the material in 1989 through clay modelling, the artist has tried his hand at several of them. In particular, he tested direct carving on wood before falling in love with bronze, which he successfully cast for the first time in 1993. He describes this experience as follows: "Bronze is living a journey with creation, leading to all the stages of the work, from conception to technical realisation, especially the fascinating moment of the fusion of the metal".

For his sculpture Oceano nox created in July 2013, the artist wanted to convey the harshness and danger of the fisherman's job. With this work, he also aims to make the public think about ecological issues such as the dangers of overfishing and the importance of having a reasoned approach in the use that Man makes of natural resources.

Oceanox sculpture Jean-Pierre Gendra
Oceanox sculpture Jean-Pierre Gendra

A placemat for the home

In the hall of the former seaside villa of the Le Gall family hangs on the wall a Bigouden doily made from Irish lace using the technique known as "picot piqué". This work, which was made in the 1950s, was generously given to us by Lucile Chever, lacemaker and active member of the cultural association "Dame Picot" which aims to promote this traditional skill.

This doily is made up of a network of motifs inspired by Irish coins: oak leaves, farandoles of leaves, ears of corn, bunches of grapes, double roses, eglantines, helices, etc. The motifs were made using a steel hook, DMC wire and cordonnet (linen thread). They are laid out harmoniously on a canvas before being firmly woven. The network is then consolidated with a picot stitch.

Irish lace was the main subsistence activity of the workers in the canneries of the Breton coast during the great sardine shortage of 1902 to 1908. During this period of great famine in Brittany, religious congregations as well as wealthy aristocrats mobilised to finance the teaching of this craft to factory workers in order to offer them a source of income in these difficult times. The finished works were then sent to Paris and sold to elegant ladies in department stores.

A striking model

In the office window, a beautiful model of a sardine fishing boat from the 1860s-1900s is proudly displayed. This model was made in the 2010s by the former fisherman's master Patrick Chever. Since he started modelling his first ship, a trawler from Concarneau, in 1967, his collection has grown to include around a hundred models of old ships from all over the world.

Patrick Chever works on his models from photographs, frescos and drawings. From these elements, he reconstitutes the plans of the ship, focusing on the details. His quest for authenticity continues in the search for the original wood in order to stick as closely as possible to the original ship. For this sardine boat, he used oak for the hull and chestnut for the ribs and floor. The yards are made of northern fir.

Everything is meticulously reproduced, including small parts of 3 to 4 millimetres. The model maker doesn't count the hours he works. He has created his own tools to work better and collects materials from shipyards.

The hull is painted black as a reminder of the use of tar as an exterior coating to make the ship watertight. This tar was commonly referred to as 'coltard'. The model also has two sails, a foresail in the front and a windvane in the middle. The rudder and centreboard are also in place.

The large boats shown in this model were generally 9 to 10 metres long. They were used in the spring for sardine and mackerel fishing from April to November. They then spent the winter stranded at the back of the port.

Model of a sardine boat - Patrick Chever