Vendée Miniature

As Vicki noted, I took off this morning to visit La Vendée Miniature. This is a reproduction of a Vendéen village around 1920 - at about 1/10 scale. It was impressive. There are about 50 buildings and 650 or so people, each made by hand. The people are clay; the buildings were built of materials similar to the real thing. These are not painted to look like stone - they are stone. The roof shingles were handmade and fired in a kiln - about 80,000 of them.

I took a photo or two….

This is a working windmill (see video link at end).

The bakery

A marriage at City Hall

The cooper - they had to shape and bend the wood as they would have for a full-size barrel.

Gypsies

The church

The church was made with granite, tufa, and lime. There are 12,000 real slates on the roof and the whole thing weighs about 500 kg (more than half a ton).