Bigouden country

the style of this article is not encyclopedic.

The Country bigouden, advanced ground torn and notched by the sea since millenia, peninsula fixed on the borders of the Breton peninsula; small massive and compact country, on which it costume of the men and the women confers since nearly two centuries its image the emblematic… Photographiée on envi and easily crunched, the inconfondable high miter of lace of the area of Pont-l'Abbé became the symbol, not only Country bigouden, but of very whole Brittany. Sumptuously interpreted by the embroiderers, the feather of peacock became the federator element of a whole community…

Country Bigouden . Ar Vro Vigoudenn (delivery vi' gudn), this country gathers three cantons: The Guilvinec, Pont-l'Abbé and Plogastel-Saint-Germain, is a score of communes of the department of the Finistere in area Brittany.
Its capital is Pont-l'Abbé. The country bigouden is cut out in two communities of communes, the Community of communes of Southern the Bigouden Country and the Communauté of communes of the Highland Bigouden.

List communes by canton and alphabetical order


According to the historical delimitations of the Pays Bigouden, the common S of Gourlizon, Guiler-on-Goyen or of Plonéis does not form part of it even if these communes were included in the canton of Plogastel-Saint-Germain. He is of use to attach them to the country known as Glazik.

joke

" And God in his anger,
To be avenged for mankind,
The FIT to come on the ground,
The race of Bigoudens".

This " sentence" can be read on the front of some coffees and restaurants, and in particular at Rene Goaer in Landudec.

Flag

The flag, recently adopted (in 1992), is composed of 3 parts. The left half is strewn with hermines, representing 20 common bigoudenes, the gilded bottom represents the embroidery, art dominating of the area. The three bands oranges of the right part point out the 3 cantons of the country.

Monuments

  • Castle of Pont-l'Abbé, XIVe-XVIIIe century.
  • Church of the Carmelite friars of Pont-l'Abbé, XIVe-XVe century, old vault of the monastery of the fathers Carmelite friars.
  • Church of Lambour to Pont-l'Abbé, XIIIe-XVIe century, with the bell-tower decapitated in 1675.
  • Vault of Languivoa, at Plonéour-Lanvern, XIVe-XVIIe century.
  • Romance Church of Loctudy, XIIe century.
  • Gothic Church of Penmarc' H, XVIe century.
  • square Tower of Saint-Guénolé, XVe century, turn-bell-tower of the old church.
  • Vault Our-Lady-of-the-Joy in Penmarc' H, in a splendid site vis-a-vis the sea.
  • Martyrdom and vault of Tronoën as a Saint-Jean-Trolimon, oldest (1450) of large the Breton Martyrdom S.
  • Vault of Penhors in Pouldreuzic, which shelters largest (at the beginning of September) forgiveness of the country bigouden.
  • Headlight of Eckmühl to Penmarc' H, 1897.
  • Of many manors, Dolmen S and Menhir S.

Tourism

  • the Tourist office of the Highland Bigouden

Events

  • the festival of the Crawfish, in August, with Lesconil.
  • the festival of the embroidering-machines, the 1st fortnight of July, with Bridge the Abbot.
  • Mondial' Folk (International festival of folklore) in August: http://www.mondialfolk.org

Characteristic

Particularism bigouden

Well before the French revolution, the dress of the Country bigouden had already been different from the remainder of Brittany. But it is during the XIX° century that the ornamentations make their appearance and occupy an increasingly important surface, mainly on the male waistcoat and the female drill plate. Present in the collections of the Breton departmental Museum in Quimper, the oldest known dated costume posts artistically, in the embroideries of a neck of male drill plate, its act of creation: 1814. As from this time, specificity bigoudene is expressed in the evolution and the interpretation of the reasons, the such feather of peacock or the horn of ram, like in the bright colors (yellow, red, orange) on a black bottom of cloth or velvet. Among women, the superimposed skirts yield their place to the staged wheels, then with a skirt covered with an apron which him also will cover embroideries. The waistcoats are also metamorphosed: the handles increasingly long, are made cloth, then of velvet completely covered with embroideries. The drill plate becomes a true embroidered carapace being spread out over all the chest. The male bragou-braz is gradually replaced by broad cloth pants, surmounted by a jacket at the double embroidered edges, just like the broad drill plate. The take-off of the cap is, as for him, more recent. The legend wants that the height of the caps had been an answer blusterer of the women to the decapitation of the bell-towers bigoudens, royal punishment with the revolt of the red bonnets in 1675. Actually, the cap started to go up only at the beginning of the XX° century. Of a bonnet covering only the top of cranium to a triangle of fabric posed on an embroidered or woven fabric building flowers, velvet or of money, the cap takes the form, around 1900, of a sugar bread roll. In the years 1925-30, it measures fifteen to twenty centimetres; it reaches its apogee shortly after the second world war. Until the year 2000, this cap oscillated between thirty and thirty-five centimetres. Its embroidered surface increased in proportion, just as the two ribbons which are, them also, covered of embroideries.

Year Dennerien-neud, gunners of wire

Distributed in all the country, the embroiderers were at the beginning of the tailors; they formed, with the tisserands, an extremely important corporation with the XIX° century. The professionals exerted on their premises or in the residence of their customer. They had “well-established” only starting from the medium of the XIX° century. Admired for their know-how as much as dreaded for their social role, they belonged at a very welded community. Alive gazettes, they played the part of storytellers with taken care, advisers, even of factors. It is necessary to await the creation of workshops of embroideries, where on the registers the narrower terms “embroiderers” and “embroidering-machines were reproduced”, to manage to quantify - and thus to measure the importance of this corporation. For example, in Pont-l'Abbé, one counts in 1901 seventy tailors and apprentices, four tailoresses and fifty-nine embroidering-machines. These last were often of all young girls or young women, who ceased their activities when they were to hold a household. Sometimes, they were converted into lacemakers: the work with the hook offered an undeniable freedom of movement and could be put up with the monitoring of infants. The embroidering-machines were paid with the cap, but remunerations remained modest The war of 1914-1918 plunged the country in a long mourning and drove out the colors of the costume. The progressive abandonment of the costume embroidered by the men who returned from the face, the spectacular increase in the price of the matter and the lack of evolution of remuneration carried a heavy blow to the corporation.

To save know-how and the tradition

In addition, as of the end of the First World War, the port of the cap was done less and less running, initially in the cities, then in the campaigns. As for the traditional costume, it was raised more only at the time of festivities: marriage or baptism, forgiveness and other religious holidays. But this rich person identity inheritance never lost himself, and this thanks to some initiatives which contributed to the radiation of know-how bigouden. In 1870, Corentin Pichavent founded in Pont-l'Abbé the Pichavant House, a workshop which gathers embroiderers, embroidering-machines and lacemakers. Already distinguished with the World Fair from Paris in 1900, then with the exposure of the Art female of Versailles in 1902 and finally with the exposure of decorative Arts of Strasbourg in 1925, the “Children Pichavent successors” transfer themselves to entrust in 1930 the execution of the clothes of the Breton writer Charles Goffic, lately elected with the French Academy. Another initiative also contributed to revitalize the embroidery bigoudene: in the years 1900, an economic microphone-crisis threatened to reduce the whole of the population to misery. Ladies of the local middle-classes and aristocracy had then the idea to teach with the women and the young girls bigoudenes the lace of Ireland. These laces were marketed in the whole world by the Pichavant house. In addition, in 1928, the manor of Kerazan, not far from Pont-l'Abbé, was bequeathed to the Institute of France by its last owner, and this provided that the field is opened with the public and that there a school of applied arts for the young girls of the country is created: a workshop of embroidery was born thus there. For lack of professional outlets, the school closed in 1966, but it had taken part in the transmission of a threatened know-how. In 1936, the wife of the owner of the Large Mills of Pont-l'Abbé, Marie Anne Minor, opened a workshop of preparing of headstocks. Of needle and thread, more than 250 models, accurately reproducing the costumes of the countries of Brittany and the areas of France, appeared in the catalog. In the following decades, the house Minor diversified its activity in which shone the talents of many young artists carried by the vagueness of the folk revival of the immediate post-war period: printed and embroidered table linen, church vestments and banners give new glares to ancestral know-how. The secrecy of the success of Mrs Minor: to manage to associate the extraordinary talent of the embroiderers and embroidering-machines bigoudens with the creativity of the contemporary artists. Today, the House Minor preserves a solid reputation in the embroidery of the Breton costumes, as well near the Celtic circles as of the private individuals.

Lastly, for a few years, Pont-l'Abbé has granted the title of capital of the embroidery thanks to its Festival of the Embroidering-machines. This is why one of the reasons for embroidery, the feather of peacock, which pavoise on the pediments of the public buildings or deprived, became an emblem behind which the inhabitants of the entire country recognize themselves.

One initially made lie down the children and the husband ”. Pierre-Jakez Hélias

  • natural Site protected from the bay of Audierne
  • the Climat is typically oceanic with a Hiver soft but wet and a be without excessive heat. to also see Climate of Finistere.
  • names wafers/crepes are different in the country bigouden. Contrary to the remainder of Brittany, a pancake can be here salted or sweetened (according to the trimming), and the wafer will be a thicker verson pancake, generally salted.

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