An unexpected find in a Troyes back streetA small Museum in Troyes

One of the delights of being an independent traveler is finding the unexpected. Sometimes it is a small bar, warm on a cold day, where the locals embrace the traveler and tell you their special secrets. Sometimes it is a small museum or local history overlooked by the rest of the world. A visit to Troyes, 200 km east of Paris turned up just such a gem.

Troyes is an ancient city, burned down and rebuilt in the 16th century, with wonderful Renaissance architecture. Hidden down a narrow street, at 7 rue de la Trinité, the Maison de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière (the Museum of Hand Tools) is announced with a small sign easily overlooked by the passer-by. The building itself dates from 1556 and was the family home of a rich merchant, Jean Mauroy. Jean and his wife, Louise de Pleures, died without children and willed their estate to provide a college for young orphans.

The administrators of the estate established a workshop for knitted stockings that allowed the orphans to follow an apprenticeship as textile workers. It eventually became the most important manufactory in Troyes.

In 1969, the City gave the building over to the establishment of a tool museum and library. The Museum welcomed its first visitors in 1974. In the intervening years the Museum building has been restored and the collection developed.

The Museum is beautifully presented and a delight to explore.

The Museum displays hand tools used by all of the important trades from the 18th and 19th centuries, the time before Mechanization. The tools are displayed by trade and also by tool type. The number of trades represented is amazing. Carpenters, stone cutters, tilers, brick makers, farriers, masons, coopers, blacksmiths, furriers, millstone dressers, glove makers, clog makers and many more find space in the galleries.

Display cases group the tools by trade and by tool type.

If you can’t guess what these cutters were for, then ask for the exhibits list in English.

Like many of these small museums in France this one is beautifully presented. The display cases are well laid out, well lit and uncluttered enough to display the exhibits clearly. Our €6.50 admission gave us use of a folder with the numbered exhibits named in English which was very useful for some of the more esoteric items.

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A beautiful spinet made with traditional tools and methods demonstrates that the old skills are being kept alive.

A visit to the tool museum is a wonderful counterpoint to visits to the grand chateaux of the Loire Valley. The tools are practical but simple and seem to our modern eyes to be too primitive to have produced the beautifully crafted buildings and furniture of the chateaux. But used by craftsmen of great skill these tools were enough to build both the beauty and excess of the chateaux and thousands of less spectacular but equally elegant items of everyday life.

The tool museum was an unexpected find.