La poésie dans le crayon, mine de rien
In his studiopencil island in Olliegues, Patrick Tourre puts himself on stage during visits to better explain his know-how. Around the pencil.
As before going on stage, Patrick Tourre smokes a last cigarette on the banks of the D906 in Olliergues. Indeed, in front of his workshop on the Île aux crayons in which the hirsute giant is preparing to keep the twenty spectators-visitors spellbound, the craftsman has the (right) easy word. He wears a warm smile behind a surgical mask (Covid-19 requires).
Once again, like every year and several times a day, the Ollierguois is about to put on a show.
For an hour, in a skilful mix of bonhomie, humor and pedagogy, Patrick Tourre indeed presents his activity. In which he launched himself for more than twenty years. The man settled in Olliergues in the early 2000s. There he designs and shapes unique pencils with raw shapes. They are shaped like the tree branches he uses.
The importance of detail
“My work thus consists in making pencils mainly in willow or wicker,” he summarizes in the preamble to his long demonstration. In the freshness of a workshop in his image: posters of Nougaro, Rita Mitsouko on the walls, old carpets strewn with wood shavings on which school benches have been aligned, not to mention the scent of wood from the barns of yesteryear .
“I'm a pretty messy guy, concedes a Patrick Tourre who is fully aware of the importance of the visual. I didn't want a “Fashion and Works” style interior. Here, every detail is important and I want people to be able to focus on one of the objects. Some are deliberately camouflaged. You have to make an effort to be amazed. Installed behind his lathe facing the public, the craftsman continues his explanations.
“I go and get my antlers from the surrounding nature,” he explains. I cut small pieces of 22 centimeters. With a wood bit I drill on one side and the other to introduce two mines, one in each hole. »
Next comes the practice. Leaning on his lathe, the craftsman with the predestined name, performs in front of the audience the gesture reproduced to infinity or almost. Each year, Patrick Tourre produces up to 6.000 pencils per year and by hand.
In front of a captivated public that he does not hesitate to question or gently provoke in a strict familiarity, the man digresses on the essence of the trees, their color.
“This tree is black but when it is still green, it is red”, or even aspirin. Without forgetting to turn around the pot… of pencils.
Supporting evidence, we therefore learn that the mine does not break when the pencil falls.
"It breaks when you prune it," he says. How also to sharpen the object correctly: “You have to turn the pencil sharpener and not the pencil. »
The pencil: a poetic object
In barely an hour, and casually, Patrick Tourre succeeded in making this utilitarian object which had fallen into disuse, an astonishing and poetic subject.
Like an extension of the hand and the thought, the wild, never straight pencils of Patrick Tourre are in the image of its designer.
Humanist and free, the former adventurer (born in Tunisia, returned to France then left for Africa, having also worked on oil rigs), ignores conventions and is particularly wary of market relations. Through the visit of his studio, out of the ordinary, he gives visitors the opportunity to understand his work. Trying to instil the desire and therefore the pleasure of buying his name pencils at the end of the visit. They are also wacky like the “Tutti color” or the “Zigotto”.
Bet succeeded again this time. Everyone leaves with a pencil by Patrick Tourre. Like a small piece of this singular craftsman.
YANN TERRAT – Journalist – The Gazette of Thiers Ambert
Practical: This summer, the visits and demonstrations of the workshop of theIsland of pencils in Olliergues take place until Friday August 21: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 15, 16, 17 and 18 p.m. (open Saturday August 15). The shop remains open on Fridays from 14 to 19 p.m.