mirrored sign

I’ve spoken about wanting to include a mirrored door as part of my kitchen plans. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it, but if I manage to recycle the old, arched mirrored door I want to give it a French bakery look. I found these images that inspired me…

..but amongst these were images of the Ladurée bakery. I thought I’d go into a little more detail about this inspiring brand.

Ladurée is a French luxury bakery and sweet house created in 1862; 15,000 of their double-decker macarons are sold every day. In fact it was this macaron which enabled Ladurée’s rise to fame. In 1930 the grandson of Ladurée, Pierre Desfontaines, had the original idea of the double-decker, sticking two macaron shells together with a creamy ganache as filling.

The first bakery was founded on the Rue Royale, Paris in 1862 by Louis-Ernest Ladurée a miller who, in typical French style, was also a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.

He was an outspoken supporter of social reform. Despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.

In fact, during the Paris Commune uprising of 1871, the bakery was burnt down. It was this time that the visuals of the brand formed. When the shop was rebuilt Jules Chéret incorporated in the interior decoration the chubby cherubs dressed as pastry cooks. They were painted by him on the ceiling, and are now part of the company’s emblem. The interior of the premises were painted in the same celadon colour as the façade.

Desfontaines also opened a tearoom at the pastry shop. Ladies were not admitted to cafés, which were the exclusive domain of men (again, how French) so this was enormously liberating for women as well as an inevitable commercial success.

You can see why the beautiful Belle Époque style decor would inspire me. Simply delightful!