French Old Wooden Treasures~

On By cindy knokeIn Conservation, EXTERIOR & INTERIOR DESIGN, MY PHOTOGRAPHS, REVERIES, TRAVEL REVIEWS


The Alsatian Museum in Strasbourg France is located in three adjoining homes built in the 1600’s.


All the homes have inner courtyards with multi-storied covered walkways.


We stayed in the Hotel Corbeau nearby that was similar in style and built in 1528.

The museum homes are filled with over 5000 artifacts depicting everyday life.

Hand carved and painted woodwork is especially charming as you see in this very cozy bed.

Flour mill spouts attest to the emphasis placed on artistry in everyday living.

Many homes of this era contained family businesses like this old pharmacy.


This typical traveling prayer case demonstrates both faithful devotion and an artistic sensibility.
Cheers to you from the old wooden treasures of France~

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201 thoughts on “French Old Wooden Treasures~”

  1. I love museums that show how “normal” people lived (as opposed to royalty, for example). These houses are gorgeous–especially that lovely curtained bed. I have mixed feelings about those flour mill spouts. While I appreciate them as works of art, those silently screaming faces freak me out a little.

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    1. Yes, I hear you on all points. I also prefer cozy, charming abodes to ostentatious, cold castles. The flour spouts are a bit spooky, but not as extreme as medieval water spouts that are truly terrifying.

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  8. Beautiful, why oh why don’t we get beauty and attractive courtyards in buildings now. We have grey facias and tiny square windows and no balcony or grass. These have lasted the test of time too. Are those rails for hanging out wet clothes I wonder. Just beautiful Cindy you see the most amazing places.

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    1. I hear you loud and clear about modern architecture and I agree with you completely. The thing that so strikes me about medieval Europe is the everyday attention to artistry. The flour spouts are a good example. Our contemporary ones would be beige and made of plastic. I dislike beige, and plastic. Our houses are all beige. And I also love the inner courtyards which is why we have one in our house with a fountain and flowers and the whole bit. I appreciate your resonance Charlotte. <3

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  9. Ever so beautiful, Cindy. I simply love those old wooden houses. Btw, your hotel must have been like my most favourite hotel in England, Salford Hall [http://tinyurl.com/yar825bw].

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  14. How interesting, Cindy. Just imagining people living in the 1500s floors me! I guess we in the Midwest are “spoiled” by the relative conveniences of life in “modern” times, ha! Not sure I’d feel too comfy in that teeny bed, though (more like claustrophobic!!)

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    1. We are bigger then they were back then. Shakespeare’s house is like a hobbit home. You need to be in love with the person you share that bed with! Or else very cold……Laughing~

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    1. Well your comment is a treasure for me.
      I love living history especially, like these homes, that make me feel how much more talented these people were than me.
      Humans don’t necessarily evolve, which is puzzling.

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  21. This must have been a fascinating tour where you could envision people’s daily lives. I love how all the buildings have settled and are out of true, much like a funhouse.

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  22. I stayed in a hotel in deep rural France with some splendid wooden bannisters. It also had toilets in the Portakabin in the loft. A psychotic parrot in a cage on the bar. One of my most memorable meals was eaten in the little restaurant watching the old boys playing boules in the square. The pate… I can still recall that. Funny how physical objects can take you back. Not as surely as smell will, though I do recall the smell of the washing drying in the loft. The same loft with the Portakabin.

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    1. Yes, well the other undeniable fact about this part of the world is the food. The Alsace region bordering Germany gives you this fusion of German and French cooking traditions that is simply divine. You and I first met over our cooking blogs as you may recall, and I know we both very much appreciate good food which France is justifiably famous for. I would like some of that pate’ right now as a matter of fact……..

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    1. Oh yes I do hope you go. Pack your warm jacket and go visit the Christmas Markets with him. They are without a doubt the most charming Christmas experience I have ever had.

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  25. A gem of a post, dear Cindy! <3 You captured stunningly all those precious surfaces and materials!… We did not make it in our first trip to Strasbourg, to the Alsatian Museum, next time it will be a must!! 😊

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      1. I have not been to Strasbourg Cindy, I lived in Europe for two years, I visited France a number of times, mostly Paris, the other places I saw were from the window of a bus heading back to Germany.

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  28. All elegant, Cindy. I particularly like the flour spouts. I assume grain would be ground like at a flour mill and then come shooting out? Or would the flour be kept in a container with a way of letting out measured amounts? Or is it that I don’t have a clue? 🙂 Curt

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    1. I don’t know, but I am guessing the grain was ground and kept in huge casks with some sort of lifting door to allow a person’s purchased flour to pour into their receptacle, just like the coffee bean dispensers in whole foods or sprouts. Up goes the door and out pour your beans. You close the door when your bag is spilling beans onto the floor. Laughing…… Hopefully someone might actually know as I am just guessing…….

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    1. The hotel we stayed at was built as a hotel in 1528 and has been a hotel all this time. It is amazing to stay in these buildings even as a guest. I wish people who live in these buildings would blog about it with photos!

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  32. It’s all so old! We have 2 buildings dating back to the late 1600’s. After that … late 1700’s.
    Very wonderful that you slept in one!

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  37. Amazing that they’ve stood the test of time. I could wander through those rooms and courtyards for a long time, imagining people from the past going about their daily chores. Lucky you to be staying in a similar charming old hotel 🙂

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  43. What artists back then and they built houses to last and surrounded themselves with beauty. Now in this area a house is built of ticky tacky and considered old and obsolete at 50 years (or younger) and demolished for a newer, bigger, but definitely not better model. The trend at the moment is square and blocky, no decks or charming verandas, no gardens or grass areas. Thank you for showing us these charming buildings and way of life from so long ago

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    1. I think of some sort of entropy, anti-progress. We have lost a slower pace of land based life, with home based businesses, attention to artistry in the smallest details of everyday living, gorgeous cathedrals with music in every town, towns themselves that are works of art, with green spaces and healthy rivers and lakes all around filled with wild life. Progress has brought us glass box buildings, beige cookie box suburban mass development, freeways, crowded ugly cities, plastic and more plastic, harmful chemicals in our food and in our homes, destroyed natural places, and no stunning cathedrals open all the time with regular free organ and choral performers. This is progress.

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      1. So sad, but I can’t see any chance of change from a political level. But if we all individually do the best we can maybe we can make our small circles happier with the hope it will spread. Blogs certainly help with connecting people all over the world 💖

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  48. Ein schöner Bericht. Wir haben in der Schweiz (Switzerland) fast in jedem Dorf ein kleines Museum, das ebenfalls Inneneinrichtungen, Geräte und Artikel aus dem 16. und 17. Jh. zeigt.
    Ernst

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  50. Beautiful museum….even if I was expecting it to be full of Alsatian dogs! lol… (German Shepherd Dogs) I was most curious lol, I didn’t know such dog museums existed 🙂 Not to worry! It’s always educational as well as delightful to visit your posts!! 🙂

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