French Country · Encyclopedia · Fire and Light
Bellows
Bellows for reviving the fire, with leather hardened by use and a nozzle blackened by blowing on embers. Sometimes a simple bellows became a work of art, its leather worked into a face by an anonymous hand.
French: soufflet · Leather and wood
At a glance
- Materials: wood boards, leather, metal nozzle
- Use: reviving embers on the hearth
- Special example: leather shaped into a face
- Look for: original leather and nozzle
What it is
Two wooden boards joined by a leather bellows, a valve on the bottom board and a metal nozzle. Squeezing the handles pushes air through the nozzle onto the embers.
Everyday bellows were plain, but the book shows a surprising example in which the leather covering has been worked into a face or emblematic figure.
At the hearth
Before closed stoves, fire was kept alive day and night on the open hearth. Bellows, trammels, ash shovels and gridirons formed a set of iron and wooden tools that stood around it, often decorated with the same symbolic motifs.
Collecting and displaying it
Original leather is rare, as it dries and cracks; replaced leather is common and acceptable if well done. Carved boards add value.
Hung beside the fireplace, a bellows is both useful and decorative.
Source: Les Trésors de France: vieux métiers et objets d'autrefois (Éditions Rustica, Détours en France collection, 1995), pp. 116–121, with general background on the object. The book was published in 1995, so workshops, people and figures are described as they were then. Regional names and dates are given as the book records them; a style or a region of origin does not by itself date an individual piece.