TOULOUSE
This tour will take you to the Maison Giscard, a former factory producing moulded terracotta ornaments and a veritable ‘catalogue house’.
The scarcity of white stone – a noble and expensive material – led to the search for alternative solutions to adorn bourgeois buildings with elegant ornamentation. The Virebent family played a part in the development of this modern approach. The father, Jacques-Pascal, was the city’s chief architect. His son, Auguste, devised a revolutionary process for the industrial production of ornaments to be fitted to façades. Cutters were used to carve various shapes out of the clay. Auguste patented this process in 1831. It was known as ‘plinthotomy’. From then on, the Virebent factory in Launaguet constantly produced new decorative moulds which the public could choose from a catalogue: a resounding success, as in 1845, one hundred thousand terracotta pieces emerged from the kilns! The family tradition continued until Anne Virebent married Henri Giscard, a talented craftsman who added his own touch to the process. This tour takes you from Rue de la Pomme to the Marengo district. As you walk up Allées Jean Jaurès, you’ll discover decorations worthy of Versailles or the Renaissance… Finally, the Giscard house – closed since 2005 – will, as a special exception, open the gates to its courtyard to round off this tour. After all that, we promise you’ll be obsessed with ‘plinthotomie’, to the point of wanting to drop the word into conversation at your next dinner with friends!
Only Joseph Giscard’s former office and the shaping workshop are accessible. The production workshop, which is awaiting restoration, is not open to the public.
Guided tour in partnership with Le Noviciat.
