Plaques et Pots

Plaques et Pots is so minuscule and unassuming that you can easily miss it. But miss this old shop in the Les Halles quarter and you’ll miss a chance to take home a piece of France both present and past. To some travelers the enamel plaques and signs sold here will seem too utilitarian or too touristy to be special. Others will find that they make the perfect Francophile gift or decoration for your own home. In either case, pushing open the door to Plaques and Pots is like opening an old trunk: you never know what treasures and memories you’ll find.

If you’re lucky, you’ll come upon former owners Joseph and Jacqueline Bakerdjian. Though they recently sold the shop after 38 years, they stop by occasionally to give new owner Josette Samuel a helping hand or friendly advice. They are among the most personable merchants one could ever hope to meet. And to hear Joseph describe the old manufacturing process for something as common as a plaque stating “WC” is to sense how much know-how lies behind the most functional articles. The Bakerdjians’ shop, which they purchased in 1966, was called Papeterie Moderne, the modern paper originally sold being butcher’s paper, butter paper, and other wraps for the food trade at Les Halles. When the food trade began leaving the quarter in 1969, the Bakerdjians turned their attention to plaques and signs required by food merchants, tradesmen, professionals, cafés, and restaurants throughout the city.

Those articles form the heart of the stock that Josette Samuels now carries: plastic labels indicating the names of dozens of cheeses; small enamel plaques announcing Fermez la porte, s.v.p., WC, Chien Méchant; desktop or door plaques declaring Professeur, Docteur, Avocat, along with other utilitarian signs. As the surrounding quarter changed, the Bakerdjians found that their wares also appealed to foreign travelers. They further recognized the retro charm of decorative signs: Paris street names, old-fashioned plaques such as a small sign reading “Le Petit Jardin” or a large “Passage des Amoureux,” and various flea market finds. Signs can also be made to order here. Hidden in a back drawer there’s a collection of 75-year-old enamel street numbers. I leave it to you to find the poetry in these items, as I did in giving a friend the number 112, now nailed into her hurricane-battered house on the edge of the Florida Everglades. The articles sold here make for wonderful gifts for Francophile friends or for yourself. The old bundles of butcher’s paper make for original gift wrap, by the way.

One would regret the Bakerdjians’ retirement were it not for the fact that Josette Samuel is such an amiable and appropriate successor. When Josette likens the transfer of ownership from the Bakerdjians to her adoption of two children from the very hands of their biological mothers (“up to a point, of course”), you know that she hasn’t merely bought a storefront. Josette has accepted the challenge of maintaining the shop’s tradition, without being weighed down by it, while pursuing her craftsmanship as a potter. She makes rough, earthy pots in her private workshop upstairs and sells them alongside the plaques, which explains the shop’s new name. In the years to come Plaques and Pots will certainly evolve, as Papeterie Moderne did. Eventually the old plaques, random numbers, names of cheeses that no longer exist, and decades-old butcher paper will be sold off. For some travelers, their disappearance will go unnoticed. For others, I recommend stopping by sooner rather than later.

Plaques et Pots, 12 rue de la Ferronnerie, 75001 Paris. Tel 01 42 36 21 72. Closing definitively at the end of July 2009.

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