French Country · Encyclopedia · The Cabinetmakers' Work
Flour box
A Provençal kitchen box that looked like a decorated box when stood upright. Laid flat, it was filled with flour through a sliding door, fish were put in, and the whole thing was shaken to coat them.
French: farinière, « farinaïo » · Provence · carved wood
At a glance
- Region: Provence
- Provençal name: farinaïo
- Use: flouring fish and storing flour
- Common until: the mid-nineteenth century
What it is
The farinière is a small wall or table piece that stood upright when not in use. To use it, the cook laid it flat, poured flour in through a sliding door, put in the fish to be floured and shook it.
The book calls it a fine invention that eased the housewife's work.
A family of Provençal furniture
Very common until the mid-nineteenth century, the flour box was carved in the same spirit as the panetière, the bread box, and the salt boxes of Provence. Together they form a distinctive group of small, richly decorated kitchen furniture, often hung on the wall in a row.
Collecting and displaying it
Check that the sliding door is original and still runs. Provençal kitchen pieces are popular and sometimes copied; old flour boxes show worn edges and a slightly furry interior.
Hung near a range or a dresser, a farinière continues the story of the Provençal kitchen.
Source: Les Trésors de France: vieux métiers et objets d'autrefois (Éditions Rustica, Détours en France collection, 1995), pp. 124–129, 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.