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A Siege souvenir’s surprising tie to four generations of one family
There are many things I’m a bit obsessed with. These include cats, books, and Siege of Paris bread souvenirs. As the Siege continued over the months of fall, 1870, white flour became scarce and Parisian bakeries had to get (desperately) creative in order to keep making bread for a population for whom it was a staple. Siege bread became notorious for its unpleasant texture, hardness, and dubious ingredients, including crushed peas and, most notoriously, straw.
Jules Ferry, who was Prefect of the Seine during the Siege, and in charge of things like rationing and provisions, allegedly once lamented “Jamais les Parisiens ne me pardonneront de leur avoir fait manger un ignoble pain.” (“The Parisians will never forgive me for having made them eat vile bread.”) And he had a point; Siege bread was sometimes referred to as pain Ferry (Ferry bread).
On the plus side, it’s because Siege bread was so notoriously horrible (and so easy to preserve, since it got rock-hard very quickly) that some of it still exists today. It was often kept as an emblematic souvenir of those four difficult months of the Siege, which lasted from September 19, 1870-January 28, 1871.
It’s extraordinary to me that this bit of what should have been ephemeral everyday life in 1870 and 1871 is still around. As someone who loves history, I feel a persistent longing to really know the past, to hold it in some way. That’s why I love Siege bread souvenirs - in a sense, they’re a moment trapped in time, a little piece of the Siege of Paris preserved under glass.
Well, not always. While many surviving Siege bread souvenirs were preserved beneath glass domes, some people just kept pieces of the bread. I’ve written before about how you can see pieces like this in the permanent collection of the Musée Paul Eluard, or how one piece (with a handwritten label attached to it) was even found in someone’s great-grandmother’s chest of drawers.
How I became the owner of one of the most popular Siege of Paris souvenirs
It turns out that what seems like the most popular Siege bread souvenir - or, at least the one that seems to have survived in greatest numbers - also wasn’t behind glass, which always surprises me.
Typical example of a souvenir Siege of Paris shadowbox
(image source)
It’s essentially an open shadowbox with two souvenir medallions and a small crown of dried flowers in memory of fallen soldiers (another artifact whose survival is impressive) mounted on a sheet of paper with information of all sorts about the Siege, including the prices of essential food items, among them cat and rat meat. Some of these shadowboxes’ paper backings also include information about the Paris Commune, a revolution and civil war that occurred about two months after the Siege ended** — the two events are often conflated.
Below the medallions and dried flower crown is a small piece of Siege bread.
The fact that it has its place among those more stately and typical souvenirs shows just how much this bread was a part of the Siege of Paris. It also serves as a reminder of the hardships the besieged Parisians had to endure. Not only was the bread awful; you had to wait on line for hours, often in temperatures that were below freezing, just to get a small ration of it. In fact, many versions of this souvenir mention this, too.
In early 2022, I was, to put it mildly, elated, to buy a bread souvenir of my own. A less common model, this one features a large piece of Siege bread exclusively. It still brings me joy every day.
My first beloved Siege bread souvenir
Still, as someone who’s passionate about the Siege of Paris, I have to admit, sometimes I did think about buying one of the more iconic ones, as well. These often come up for sale at auction houses here in France, but also on sites like eBay and Le Bon Coin (a very rough French equivalent of Facebook Marketplace), where they’re usually significantly cheaper.
As a general rule, these typical souvenir shadowboxes might run around $150 give or take at auction, and anywhere from $20 to $100 on the other two sites.
Last May (I can’t believe how fast time has flown)*, I was browsing Le Bon Coin when I saw one listed for 20 euros (about $25) - an pretty low price considering how intact it was. The medallions were there, as were all of the dried flowers, although some had come unglued. And there was the little piece of Siege bread. None of this was totally unusual; many, maybe even most, bread souvenirs of this type are intact. But lately I’d been seeing more and more where the bread was missing.
(Side note: I’ve started to wonder why this is. When I first learned about the existence of Siege bread souvenirs, I thought that if the bread was missing, it was because it had disintegrated or something. But it usually seems like it’s been physically removed. Is it just a case of mishandling over time? Or was there a value to selling the bread on its own for some reason - a bit like how 19th and early 20th century photo albums are often broken down by antiques dealers, since the photos can be sold separately for high prices? I’ve never come across loose pieces of Siege bread for sale, though.)
Anyway, that day in May, there I was, looking at an ad for a shadowbox format Siege bread souvenir, and I decided to go for it.
I’d end up with even more than I’d bargained for.
At first, you might think the opposite. The seller warned me that it wasn’t in a perfect state, and she was right: There’s a bit of tearing and water damage on the paper with the prices and other information, and the bread looks as though it might have been re-glued to the paper at some point. While some versions’ medallions look like copper or brass, and others are a silver-looking material, the ones in this particular shadowbox are either a thin metal sheet or even just some kind of sturdy paper or cardboard. Either way, they’re dark and discolored. The back of the shadowbox has a fairly recently added hook so that it can be hung on a wall.
The frame had been covered in black electric tape that held a sheet of glass. To be fair, this improvised way of protecting the souvenir made total sense. It seems that the shadowbox souvenirs may not have been encased in glass like so many other Siege bread souvenirs were, but instead were sold surrounded by a simple, cheap wooden frame. The absence of a slit for a pane of glass also seems to confirm that these were just open to the world.
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| My new Siege of Paris souvenir shadowbox, shortly after I received it in the mail. |
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| The electric tape that held the glass frame was coming off the original frame when I received it. |
When you look at this type of Siege bread souvenir, you’ll often notice that frames tend to be different. I think this might have either been because there were different models being sold by the same manufacturer or more likely, versions or copies were made by many different companies. Some people may even have simply changed the frame to something more to their liking. This could have been the person who bought the souvenir originally, or maybe their descendants.
In the case of the souvenir shadowbox I bought, the original frame was kept and at some point later in history, someone tried to attach the protective glass cover, using tape instead of glue for some reason (maybe so that they could remove it easily if they ever wanted or needed to?).
It turns out that I actually got some insights about that - and about a lot more.
The story of my Siege of Paris shadowbox bread souvenir’s former owners
Buying and selling on Le Bon Coin is pretty anonymous, but I’ve started pushing myself to ask sellers where they found a Siege object I’ve bought. I’ve gotten answers that didn’t really lead anywhere - for instance, the token of presence I also bought last year was found by the seller at a flea market just outside of Paris.
But the shadowbox’s seller knew most of its story for a very particular reason, and I still marvel at it.
Here’s what the seller wrote me (original French below my English translation):
"I’ve always known this little souvenir, my paternal grandfather would show it to me so that I understood the value of things. That little piece of bread fascinated me at the time (I was born in 1960). My great-grandparents, who came from the Doubs region of France came to Paris around 1896, so they weren’t living in Paris during the Siege. My grandfather was born in Paris in 1900 and he knew this frame well because he showed it to me often. Well, I’m very happy that you like this object that was in the house of my mother, who held onto everything."
(J'ai toujours connu ce petit cadre, mon grand-père maternel me le montrait pour me faire comprendre la valeur des choses. Ce petit bout de pain me fascinait à l'époque, je suis née en 1960. Mes arrieres grands parents originaires du Doubs sont venus à Paris vers 1896, ils n'ont donc pas vécu à Paris à cette époque. Mon grand-père est né en 1900 à Paris et il connaissait bien ce cadre puisqu'il me le montrait souvent. Voilà je suis très très contente que vous aimez cet objet qui était dans la maison de ma maman qui gardait tout.)
I asked her about the changes that had been made to the frame, and she replied:
"I have to say, I think I’ve always seen it looking this way. I haven’t made any restorations. Maybe my mother did, but honestly I think I’ve always seen it this way."
The seller went on to say that she was touched by how interested I was in this frame. She finished her message by remarking,
“I can’t ask my mother, because she died two years ago. She would have loved knowing where this souvenir ended up, as she was very attached to it.”
(Je dois dire qu'il me semble l'avoir toujours vu ainsi. Je n'ai fait aucune restauration, peut-être ma maman a t elle fait quelque chose mais honnêtement il me semble l'avoir toujours ainsi… C'est… émouvant cette émotion que vous ressentez pour ce cadre. J'en suis touchée….
Je ne peux pas demander à ma maman, elle est décédée il y a 2 ans. Elle aurait adorée connaître la destination de ce cadre, elle y était très attachée.)
I exchanged a few more messages with the seller. It was a truly unexpected, emotional experience for both of us, especially on a site where any kind of contact beyond buying and selling is extremely unusual.
I was also floored and fascinated by what I’d learned. Not only had this bread souvenir stayed in the same family since close to the time it had been made; it was also a beloved object, not just one that had been forgotten over time and relegated to an attic or thrown away.
And I loved the idea that the seller’s great-grandparents seem to have been like me, fascinated by the Siege of Paris even though they hadn’t directly experienced it. I wonder if they found this souvenir at a junk shop or antiques shop at the time, or if someone who had bought it earlier gave it to them as a gift or because they were getting rid of it?
Whatever the case, I love that this piece has a story, and had been a part of the life of a family for four generations and more than a hundred years. I feel honored to own it now. I’m glad that it will still be in a home where it’s loved and appreciated and looked at with wonder.
Nearly touching 153-year-old flowers and bread
When I received the shadowbox in the mail, I was incredibly moved. Holding this iconic object in my hands was an amazing experience.
I was also surprised and touched, in a way, by how much smaller it was than I had expected. I had seen a real Siege souvenir like this at an exhibit years ago, but it had been put into a bigger, thicker frame, and mounted high on a wall and shown off in dramatic lighting, so I guess I came away with the impression that it had been bigger than it was.
I was also relieved that my Siege souvenir had gotten to me safely, with the taped glass sheet still in place so that the loose dried flowers hadn’t fallen out.
Still, the glass wasn’t tightly attached to the frame. I knew that I had to work fast to protect it from dust, not to mention cat fur.
One sunny, strangely calm afternoon, my husband and I gently did our part to help preserve this Siege souvenir.
Ideally, I had wanted to get a carpenter to make an identical wooden frame that would enclose the original one, with a piece of glass in front, as you can see on this website. I've gotten a few estimates from local carpenters, and unfortunately, I don’t currently have the budget for this but it’s the ultimate goal.
For now, we decided the best thing would be to put this shadowbox in, well, another shadowbox, which I had found at a local store. It was difficult to find a frame that was the right size, but I’m very lucky that my husband is handy and far more clever than I; he created a cardboard mount that would hold the Siege souvenir in place inside the bigger frame, then made a white paper mat to cover it.
Before that, I was the cleaning crew. I had carefully removed the glass from the front of the frame, and then the electric tape. Next, I'd very gently removed any residual adhesive that I could. At this point, the Siege souvenir looked close to what it originally looked like, with its original, glass-free frame visible.
That said, there were traces of glue on the frame that might suggest someone had glued a piece of glass directly to it at some point - maybe the tape had been holding onto the same piece of glass because the glue was no longer sticky enough to hold it in place? Or maybe the taped-on glass had been a replacement for an earlier modification that had broken or cracked.
Although there were many challenges to this project, the hardest one for me was not touching the bread or the flowers. They were so close to me as I worked, and I ached to touch these objects that had been around in an era that fascinates me.
Maybe I could have and nothing bad would have happened. But every time my fingers would inch towards them, I’d imagine a flower crumbling or the bread somehow eventually deteriorating due to something like the inevitable chemicals in the soap that I used on my 21st-century hands.
It was a struggle but I resisted, and sooner than I would have thought, the Siege souvenir was safely inside our modern shadowbox.
Unlike my large Siege bread souvenir, the bread in this one looks like it’s probably been re-glued, and is very sturdy, so my husband and I decided it would be okay to hang it on our wall. We had the perfect spot: a space above one of our bookshelves that never gets direct sunlight and is often behind our open bedroom door, further protecting it from light exposure.
When I want to, I draw our door back and have a look at it, amazed at its being there and at its long history.
Another surprising discovery about the souvenir’s past
As I was cleaning the souvenir’s frame, I happened to notice a very small line written below the other printed material on the fact sheet: Lith. Van G’Elf[y?]n. Faub. du Temple, 99, Paris
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| You can see the name and address circled in yellow in this image. |
For years I’ve been frustrated about not knowing where or how Siege bread souvenirs were produced. Most of the ones I’ve seen, including my other bread souvenir, have no signatures or markings. So I was excited beyond belief to see that little line.
Unfortunately, my research hasn’t turned up any information about a lithographer or lithography company called “Van G’Elfyn” or any similar variant. But the address was easy to find.
When I looked up 99 rue Faubourg du Temple, I was surprised to see that it’s actually in a neighborhood I know. Now and then, my family and I like to take a little trip out to Belleville, a neighborhood where one of Paris’s three Chinatowns is located. This particular address is a little further down the street from the Asian grocery store we go to when we’re there.
I still don’t know where the paper or flowers or medallions came from, or where this souvenir was sold, but it’s so strange to think that the information paper inside it, at least, was printed here, in a place I’ve been so close to so often.
Today, 99 rue Faubourg du Temple still houses shops and what seem to be craftsmen. But it doesn’t seem nearly as bustling as it probably was in 1871. Then, the building’s large doors would have opened onto a busy courtyard full of artisans’ workshops, or maybe a single busy printing shop.
99 rue Faubourg du Temple today
(photo from Google Street View)
Traces of the past, especially of everyday life in the past, so often disappear. In the end, this Siege of Paris souvenir not only preserves some traces of the past in its contents, but also in its connection to generations of a family and the still-standing place where at least part of it was made.
*It’s been a strange and busy nearly-year. One of the biggest reasons why I haven’t been blogging nearly as regularly as I used to is that I’ve been working on my next novel.
**The Paris Commune ended May 28, 1871, which means these Siege souvenirs were made after that date, but, I’m assuming, in the months that followed.
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A Beauty and the Beast retelling set during the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris, Hearts at Dawn has been selected as a Historical Novel Society Editors' Choice book. It's currently available in Kindle and paperback formats and is part of the Kindle Unlimited Library. I hope you’ll give it a read!
If you're a fan of print books, my friend Rip Coleman, founder of Bohannon Hall Press, recently surprised me by reformatting the print edition of Hearts at Dawn. I can't thank him enough.
I love the improved font, layout, & chapter headings, and hope you will, too!
Whatever the format, if you do pick up Hearts at Dawn, I’d be forever grateful if you left an honest review on Amazon and any other sites or social media platforms where you post. Reviews help books gain more visibility and credibility. Even a review of a short few lines can be incredibly helpful.
I hope you enjoyed this look at Siege of Paris shadowboxes and this one's special story. I'm still taking a hiatus from regular blogging as I work on my second novel. But I'll be back as soon as I can with more interesting and strange things to share about life during the Siege of Paris. Feel free to subscribe to this blog or follow me on Goodreads or Amazon to find out when I publish new posts.
Until next time!
