[#LeBQE] Where can you see monkeys in Toulouse?
“Dad, I want to see monkeys!” “There are phrases that can augur a complicated day. The nearest zoo being 20 kilometers away, the parent taken aback will have to use tricks to satisfy this unpredictable whim. Fortunately, the JT is committed to finding solutions and anticipating all your existential questions, even the most unusual.
Near the bunches of bananas at the market-station or on the highest branches of the plane trees, not the shadow of a representative of our hairy ancestor. Here we are condemned to survey the city in search of traces of one of these facetious quadrumanes. It is on avenue de la Colonne, at the foot of the butte de Jolimont, that a remarkable residence draws our attention. Its sumptuous facade, with a coating pockmarked by the onslaught of time, is full of ornate moldings. Our eye, drawn by the abundance of ornaments, stops on one of the upper rooms where, on a pedestal, sits a curious character. A chimpanzee!
Dressed in a frock coat and a top hat, the animal smokes a cigar with a greasy look and seems to cast a disillusioned gaze on the world. Two of his congeners occupying each of the visible corners of the street. One is modestly dressed in a smock and wearing a jockey cap while the other is quietly seated on the top of the adjoining wall, in the simplest manner.
It is by paying attention to the coats of arms which embellish its gable and its windows that this building, called ”the house of the monkeys”, reveals its history to us. Presented by two cherubs, a conquest serves as a backdrop for an escutcheon engraved with a capital G, named after the illustrious Giscard family who owned the premises for four generations. It was in 1855 that a former foreman of the Virebent factory set up on his own and founded the Maison Giscard. Specialized in architectural ornaments and religious statuary in terracotta, the manufacture will experience its finest hours in 1920.
Overloaded with motifs and riddled with symbols, the facade of the family home, adjoining the workshops, served as a showcase for the know-how of these talented workers. By digging a little, we discover among other things, a divine and winged main esoteric, the essential tools for sculptor companions or, finally, the square and the compass of the Freemasons. This taste for allegory and hidden messages opens the door to a pleasant interpretation of the simian Havana smoker. In the workshops, the monkey was then the familiar name with which the boss was decked out.
It was in 2005, on the death of the last descendant, that the factory closed its ovens. The latter bequeathed part of the factory and the 50,000 pieces kept in the workshops to the city. Faithful to the wishes of the legatee to make it a place accessible to the public and dedicated to terracotta, the town hall of Toulouse has launched rehabilitation work in order to accommodate the “Earth” workshops of the Croix-Baragnon cultural space.