Henri Roché pastels are highly coveted for their particular texture, ability to adhere to most mediums, and intensity of colors. For over 300 years, La Maison du Pastel has handcrafted these pastels, used by artists like Degas. Today, the company is run and operated by just two women — Isabelle Roché, a distant relative of Henri Roché, and Margaret Zayer. But it's taken them decades of work since Isabelle took over the dying company in 2000 to build it back up to where it is today. We visited their secret workshop in the French countryside to see how La Maison du Pastel is still standing.
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00:00In their liquid form, pastels look just like paint.
00:08But Margaret's goal is to drain the moisture,
00:13turning this bright blue blob
00:15into some of the most renowned pastel sticks on the market.
00:19La Maison du Pastel, founded by Henri Rocher,
00:22has been making them the same way for 300 years.
00:28These drawers store hundreds upon hundreds of colors,
00:32with only slight variations between shades,
00:35some only a trained eye can see.
00:38But a premium pastel business is hard to sustain.
00:42Pastels aren't as popular as other fine art mediums,
00:45like oil paint.
00:46So for years, the business struggled
00:48to find and keep its customer base.
00:52Today, its two co-owners work tirelessly
00:55to keep this centuries-old tradition alive,
00:58without sacrificing the quality the Maison is known for.
01:02So how is this niche art business still standing?
01:10Isabelle Rocher, a relative of Henri Rocher,
01:14and Margaret Sayre are the company's only two employees.
01:18They make new pastel sticks a lot like the old ones,
01:21starting with pigment and a binder.
01:24Based on a secret formula that took Rocher and his son
01:28decades to develop.
01:30People like Whistler, Rodin, Degas, Sisley,
01:34who all had issues with the medium.
01:36They were having problems with the powder sticking to the paper.
01:40They were having mold on their works.
01:43So Henri Rocher brought all of his scientific skills
01:47to try and remedy and bring them the product
01:50that they were looking for.
01:52So the base of this new color is cerulean blue,
01:56which is a very classic pigment.
02:00This new color, Caribbean blue,
02:02will join more than 1,900 others the Maison offers.
02:06It's the biggest selection in the company's history,
02:09maybe even the biggest selection of pastels ever.
02:12So adding new colors to the mix
02:14takes a discerning eye and skilled hands.
02:18That's where Margaret comes in.
02:20She's the creative force behind the business.
02:23If the sun's out and we don't feel like working, we don't work.
02:27Or if the sun's out and it inspires us
02:29to make a beautiful color, we do that.
02:34After the initial color is set,
02:36Isabel and Margaret divide it into nine gradations,
02:40from dark to light,
02:42so artists can find the exact shade they need.
02:45So I'm essentially aiming to go between those two.
02:49So we have 1, 2, 3, 4.
02:51This will be number 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
02:54Margaret, I started with one and a half spoons of the dark.
02:58I think I'm going to be making messes already.
03:01Throughout its centuries-long history,
03:04the Maison was renowned for its unmatched range of colors.
03:08This is especially important for pastel artists,
03:11who can't just mix two pastels together
03:14to make a new color before putting it to paper.
03:18You can't blend pastel on a palette like a painter might.
03:22But if you really want to make a line of a color,
03:24you need to have a stick of that color.
03:26That blending needs to happen
03:28at the very beginning of a pastel's life instead.
03:31I'm actually not far from where I want to be,
03:34which is really magical.
03:37I'm going to mix it, really mix it in before I compare.
03:42So I'm actually right now a bit darker than I want to be,
03:45so I'm going to add a bit of white.
03:48If the paste is too stiff,
03:50you can't integrate the white and the color very easily.
03:53But by bringing it to a sort of cake batter consistency,
03:56they merge quite well.
03:59When they're satisfied with the color,
04:01Isabelle scoops the mixture onto a terracotta roof tile to dry.
04:07We use the tiles because that's how it was done in the past,
04:12but the advantage of the tiles is they're porous.
04:16The tiles absorb a bunch of the moisture,
04:18creating less work for Margaret
04:20when she will put the mixture through their antique press.
04:39After the paste has adequately dried,
04:41Margaret wraps it in a cloth
04:43and uses an antique press
04:45to gradually squeeze the moisture from the paste.
04:50This is a tool that was there when Isabelle took over the Maison.
04:55I would imagine it's been used for quite a long time.
04:58Yeah, essentially a lot of what we're surrounded with
05:02are tools and drawers that date back 150 years.
05:08And it's as well, it gives us this sense of âme in French,
05:12I'm not sure how you say that in English,
05:15a spirit, a soul.
05:18Margaret joined Isabelle at the Maison in 2010
05:22after a visit to the shop.
05:24She sent a cold email inquiring about a summer job
05:27and ended up finding her calling.
05:30I would have been happy just cleaning the shop,
05:32so I didn't expect an invitation to come to the house
05:34and make the pastels with her.
05:37The way I see it is I allowed the business to survive
05:42and today I'm giving Margaret a sort of structure
05:46within which she can really make the craft live.
05:53And by the end of this,
05:54we'll probably end up with something more consistent
05:56with modelling clay, cookie dough.
06:00This is one of those points in the process though
06:03where you might want to just sort of muscle it
06:06but you actually have to be quite attentive.
06:09There are certain colours that lose water quite quickly
06:12that you can easily overpress.
06:14And it's always more complicated adding water back.
06:37Ah, that's better.
06:49Is it?
06:51Okay, I'm coming over with the paste.
06:54Hand-rolling each pastel allows them to add more pigment
06:58to the mix than if they used a machine.
07:03We tolerate certain consistencies
07:05that machines can't tolerate.
07:07We end up with colours that are either more vibrant
07:10or deeper or more concentrated.
07:14I think it's really important to be able to
07:16make sure that you're getting the right colour
07:18and that you're getting the right consistency.
07:20It's always been the phase of the making that I prefer.
07:24It's sort of the moment when you're actually forming them
07:27so you're starting to see it happening
07:30and becoming a pastel.
07:34When you don't know how to roll them,
07:36you can end up with pancakes.
07:39The first pastels I made just didn't look like anything.
07:42They were all weird shapes and they were flat.
07:46They were all weird shapes and they were flat.
07:50They had holes in them.
08:03The cutting with the large blade,
08:05I believe that was also the invention of Henri Gaucher
08:11to the traditional process because I think in the past
08:14they used to cut the sticks once they were dry,
08:17which took forever.
08:19So it's cutting the ends in one fell swoop.
08:26When Isabelle took over the company
08:28for her aging ants in 2000,
08:30she held on to many of the tools and techniques
08:33that Gaucher developed in his day.
08:37Cinq, quatre-vingt-six.
08:44And then we let them hair dry,
08:46usually for about three weeks.
08:49Kind of how the season depends on the colors.
08:53But there was also plenty about the languishing business
08:55that needed to change.
08:59When she took over, the Maison had next to no inventory
09:02and hardly any customers to sell it to.
09:06My great-aunts were in their 80s when I took over,
09:09which means that for the last 20 years they hadn't made much.
09:12They were very secretive,
09:14so they hadn't tried to generate new customers.
09:18So essentially their customer base,
09:20as the artists had grown older and died,
09:23they hadn't been replaced.
09:25So she spent her first two years regenerating supply.
09:29I'd managed to reconstitute about 250 or 300 colors.
09:34Before focusing on demand.
09:40The Maison serves what's known as a niche market.
09:43Imagine the market as a pie.
09:45While a mass-market company like Crayola
09:48tries to carve the biggest slice
09:50by appealing to as many people as possible,
09:53businesses serving niche markets
09:55cut smaller, specialty slices
09:58that appeal to a specific type of customer.
10:02A huge reason for Rocher's success
10:05was how he collaborated with artists
10:07to create the colors they needed.
10:10And Isabelle was determined to do the same.
10:13The most difficult thing for me
10:15was that I had no art background at all.
10:17I had no artistic background either.
10:20I didn't draw, I didn't paint.
10:22So when I was talking to the artists,
10:24I felt I was talking a different language.
10:28One of these artists is Claude Barré-Allard.
10:32I've known her since the day I took over.
10:35I think that the first color I made
10:37was a blue indigo, an indigo blue
10:39that she'd been waiting for for two years.
10:42Did she tell you that she was creating colors for me?
10:46Yes, I did.
10:48That makes me very proud, for sure.
10:51That means that they like
10:53what I can do with their colors, for sure.
10:57They serve me, I serve them.
10:59It's an exchange, as in life.
11:04Claude picked up pastels later in her career,
11:07after spending most of it working with oil paints.
11:13I bought the pastel Rocher very slowly in the beginning,
11:17and I discovered that I sold much more
11:20with pastel Rocher
11:22because the work became much better
11:25because the quality of peanuts was wonderful.
11:32Historically, pastels have taken a back seat
11:35to more popular mediums like oil paints.
11:39You have waves of it being used extensively,
11:42and then it goes back into being a secondary medium
11:45that people only use to do basic drawings, etc.
11:49We are aware that it comes and goes,
11:53and at the moment we feel that a few artists
11:56are really picking up the technique
11:58and doing really serious things with it,
12:01not just preparatory drawings.
12:06I walked into this thinking,
12:08there are just maybe a handful,
12:10or maybe ten artists in France
12:12that really need the pastels.
12:14If I can multiply that
12:16by the number of countries around the world,
12:18I should be able to make a living out of it.
12:21Isabel inherited an archive of century-old pigment,
12:25some of which is still usable.
12:34Sometimes, Margaret can even reach into the company's past
12:38to make new pastel colors.
12:42Oh, that's beautiful.
12:44That's a really beautiful rocher, actually.
12:48Actually, I'm processing this in real time.
12:51This pigment, this is a genuine discovery.
12:56Well, I kind of want to see what kind of pastel this makes.
13:00I imagine because it's an ochre,
13:02it will make an agreeable texture.
13:04I want to compare this to ochres
13:06that we already have in the range
13:08to see if I'd actually kind of...
13:11Do you mind if I go get a piece of paper and a bit of white?
13:15Sure.
13:16While much of the process remains the same
13:19as when Rocher ran things,
13:21what Isabel and Margaret really hold on to
13:24is how he thought about the business.
13:27What really makes our pastels what they are
13:30is his formulas and how they marry
13:32to the craftsmanship of the artisan that he met.
13:47I know that Margaret has in her head
13:50several other ranges that she wants to bring in,
13:53and on paper she already knows
13:56that one day we will go above 2,000.
14:00But essentially, as long as we keep having people
14:03coming to the shop asking for colors they don't have,
14:06we're going to be bringing in new things.
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