On the occasion of the “Aux Quatre Coins du mot” Festival in Charité-sur-Loire, visit before its disappearance to an astonishing pocket museum nicknamed the House of Words.
On the station platforms, the traveler arriving at the Charité can read this already comforting message on an old silo, in painted letters: “I am not alone, there are words”. Further on, in the alleys of this venerable historic city of Nièvre, located on the banks of the Loire, there is a pharmacy front which displays a surprising prescription: “ Words against evils. Your pharmacist “. Known for its second-hand booksellers and once dedicated to the City of Books, today City of the Word, Charité always has the word at heart and celebrates it in all its forms during its festival each year in May.
For more than ten years, at Charité, words even had their home; an atypical and colorful place located in the center, resembling a cabinet of linguistic and literary curiosities. At the origin of this House of Words: two odd bibliophile birds in the person of John Crombie, an English “book composer” of Scottish origin and Sheila Bourne, an African-American illustrator. This Parisian couple based at the Charité opened this place in 2010, both a typographer’s workshop, bookstore, publishing house and pocket museum overflowing with small original books, printed on site using antique printing presses. pedals. Here, among the mobile books and unpublished translations of sometimes forgotten comedians, Gutenberg rubs shoulders with Alphonse Allais, Samuel Beckett, Pierre-Henri Cami and Raymond Queneau for the greatest pleasure of words and playing with them. After the death of these two creators, the Kickshaws Museum is in the process of closing its doors for good and the festival has decided to pay tribute to them by opening their house museum one last time. A journey through time, through words: zany and passion.
With :
– Gilles Bouley-Franchitti, journalist, author and guide of these ephemeral visits to the House of Words
– Philippe Le Moine, director of the City of the Word
– Imogen Sharp, niece of John Crombie
– And archives of John Crombie’s voice.
Learn more :
– On the Festival «Four Corners of the Word» from Charité-sur-Loire
– On Kickshaws editions by John Crombie and Sheila Bournean article on the exhibition dedicated to them in Paris in 2017.