Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: Alsace and Lorraine, French History
Discussed in this Episode
- Baccarat
- Grand Est
- Meurthe-et-Moselle
- Moselle
- Vosges
- Lorraine
- Nancy
- Colmar
- Restaurant Chez Baptiste in Baccarat
- Sélestat
- Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat
- Musée Baccarat
- Église Saint-Rémy (Baccarat)
- Tour des Voués
- Cristallerie de Saint-Louis (Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche)
- Daum Cristallerie (Nancy)
- Lalique (Wingen-sur-Moder)
- Épinal
- Pont-à-Mousson
Welcome To Episode 618
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 618, six cent dix-huit.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Baccarat Crystal
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about Baccarat, the small town in the Grand Est that gave its name to world-famous crystal.
We talk about how glass becomes crystal, the red made with gold, the chandeliers for czars, and why the Saint-Remy Church is worth a stop, plus a detour to Sélestat’s humanist library. I’m not a [00:01:00] crystal sort of person generally, but this was definitely worth a detour.
Podcast supporters
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support.
If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consults. I’ve written eight tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I can take you on day trips from Toulouse, where I live. Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Magazine segment
Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss how you can get the best prices on train tickets in France, and also how secular France turns out for the Pope.
Why Baccarat Matters
Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie: We have a hot, hot, hot topic today.
Elyse: Oh boy, is it hot. Yeah. I’m hot. I’ve been hot for weeks. I can’t stop being hot. And here I am going [00:02:00] to talk about something that has to do with fire.
Annie: Right.
So we’re recording this in July 2026, and it’s very, very hot. But, the topic of today’s chat is about Baccarat, and a town I visited, I was there on May 12th, 2026, so very recently, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.
And so I thought, “Okay, we need to talk about this on the podcast,” because people don’t… I mean, look! Wealthy people know about Baccarat because it’s stuff that wealthy people buy. Yeah?
Elyse: That’s true.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: But, the rest of us, la plebe, as we are called in French, we don’t necessarily know about these things, and yet it is beautiful and very interesting to learn about.
If there is time, because of the geography of how this region works, this is the Grand Est area. So Baccarat is almost exactly [00:03:00] halfway between Nancy, another extraordinary city in this area, and Colmar, which is a place that a lot of you have heard about because of its wonderful Christmas market.
And if you happen to want to group these things together, halfway through is Baccarat, and then when you take the Route Nationale, which is the only way you can… Well, not the only way, but the main way you can get between Baccarat and Colmar, you will drive past Selestat, which is another really interesting medium-sized city, about 20,000 people. And it has this Bibliothèque Humaniste that I also visited. And so if there’s time, I will go into that. But we want to mostly talk about Baccarat.
Elyse: Baccarat and glass and crystal, which is of course the whole point of Baccarat.
Annie: Sure. Yes, yes, yes.
Elyse: Called Baccarat.
Arts Of Fire Basics
Elyse: In French they call glass, crystal, actually ceramics as well, of course, les [00:04:00] arts de feu, which is really appropriate because you need an enormous amount of heat and fire to make any of these things. That’s why I was so happy that we would do this because I love everything about glass and crystal. I love the idea of the magic of it. I love the idea that you take this sand, which is basically the silica, the silicate, you add a couple of other things to it. You heat it up, in this case, to 1,700 degrees Celsius. I don’t know how hot it is on the sun, but I mean, at this point, since I can’t deal with 37 degrees Celsius, I can’t even imagine it was 1,700 degrees Celsius.
And so this, this matière, this substance, is actually considered to be a solid liquid. This is the nature of physics. I guess if you look at the molecules underneath a [00:05:00] very, very, advanced microscope, you might see things swimming around. I don’t know exactly.
But to me, glass and crystal are just mystery, and therefore I love them, and I just love what it looks like. And it turns out that the northeast of what is now France is an area that has specialized in this for centuries and centuries and centuries, starting way, way back.
Annie: Yeah, yeah. I suppose it’s one of the reasons why is, is because they had a lot of fire– They had a lot of woods and forests.
Elyse: Exactly.
Annie: And a lot of wood that they could burn.
Elyse: Exactly. In fact, of course, most people may know that the glass originated in fact, a long time ago, thousands of years ago, in Mesopotamia.
But in terms of the history in Europe, really, it’s thanks to Venice that glass became something that was manufactured, and people came from many different parts of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages to discover this wonderful substance and then [00:06:00] take the techniques back with them.
And so, of course, a lot of the techniques that have now been refined and made much more sophisticated at Baccarat and at Saint Louis, the royal cristallerie, were really copied from the techniques that they learned from the Venetians. And the Venetians actually called their glass ‘cristalli’.
Annie: Ah, okay.
Elyse: Because it reminded them of crystals, I mean, just in the fact that it was transparent, that it showed light through it and all of that.
Glass Versus Crystal
Elyse: So let’s talk about what the difference is, though, between glass and crystal, because we’re talking about Baccarat, which is crystal, and Saint Louis, which is the royal crystal manufacturer as well.
And both of them, of course, started ages and ages ago making glass. But crystal is, or has been up until the recent past, a form of glass that has lead oxide in it.
Annie: Oh, I see.
Elyse: And I have a set of glasses at [00:07:00] home that I inherited from my mom, that are actually from Waterford, which is Irish, so we’re not going to talk about that because it’s not in France.
But in fact, it’s the same, pretty much the same history. And I, after reading all of this and making my notes, I went back to look at my glasses because there are three tests to tell whether what you have is actually crystal or not, especially if it’s glassware.
If it’s objects, if it’s beautiful vases, you know, unique pieces, or in the case of what’s produced a lot today, luxury chandeliers and things like that, nobody’s going to go around go pinging it on the edge to see.
Annie: No, don’t do that!
Elyse: Don’t do that! But in fact, there are three things you can do to discover whether you actually have lead crystal or lead crystal glass. You can… The terms are interchangeable. One of them is by literally you do a ping on the edge, and if it sings.
Annie: So like…
Elyse: Yeah, no, that’s a plunk, okay?
Annie: That’s [00:08:00] definitely a plunk.
Elyse: That’s a plunk.
Annie: These are not expensive glasses from, what, Ikea or something?
Elyse: These are Arc, I think, you know?
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: Right. There’s a difference. I love the terminology. It says, you know, if it sings or if it plunks, you have to really kind of… You have to do it delicately, and it rings. It actually, it has this ring to it, you know?
And the other, one of the other two tests is you have to hold it up to direct sunlight. And of course, most crystal is faceted so that it, it shines and reflects light more. And if you hold up anything that’s really made of lead crystal, you will see the rainbow effect. You will actually see the rainbow effect through the glass. The prism is actually what they call it, the prism, you know?
Annie: Nice, nice.
Elyse: And then of course, the other thing, and most people who have ever had any piece of crystal know this, it’s heavy.
Annie: Ah, okay. Yeah, if it has lead in it, yeah.
Elyse: Thanks to the lead oxide.
Lead Crystal Changes
Elyse: And technically, until recent times, and I really [00:09:00] didn’t know this, so this was interesting, because that was the other thing. I went back and look at these glasses that I have that are wine glasses that I hardly use because I’m always worried about breaking them.
And now I’m kind of thinking maybe it’s a good thing I don’t use them because in 1969, the European community made a change in the composition of what is crystal for tableware. So if it’s for chandeliers and pieces like that, I don’t think it makes any difference because the luster and the reflection you get of good amounts of lead is actually what they want.
But if it’s tableware, and this is the invention of the French, was the idea of making tableware out of crystal, they no longer use lead oxide because they discovered that it does leach out.
Annie: Ah, it can make you sick, yeah.
Elyse: So if you actually use this all the time, which would’ve been not us, but the aristocracy, maybe that’s a little bit why they got wacky after a while.
Annie: [00:10:00] One of the many reasons, yeah.
Elyse: One of the many reasons. And so now they have substituted other oxides that do almost the same thing. So for you and I, we would not be able to tell the difference. Even me, who has actually worked a little bit with glass and crystal, I probably would not be able to know what the difference is. But it is interesting to know that what we call crystal, which is technically lead crystal or lead glass, is no longer made officially with lead if it is made in Europe.
Annie: Okay, interesting.
Elyse: Okay. Keep that in mind, because I have no idea about other parts of the world.
French Glassmaking Origins
Elyse: So basically, a little bit, just a back, back history. The idea of glassmaking, of course, is really ancient, and it began in France, as most people I’m sure know, with pieces of glass that were used for stained glass, which was, they call colored in the mass. That’s the term that’s actually used. How they did it, [00:11:00] nobody to this day actually knows because they had a secret formula.
But glass at that time was not used as tableware. And when it started to be used as tableware, thanks to the Venetians’ idea being transported to royalty and aristocracy in Western Europe and in France, the place that they decided to set up most of the glass factories, in fact, in France, was indeed in the northeast, in the Moselle area, in the northern Vosges area, where there were enormous, enormous forests and lots of rivers. You have to have both. You need to have both to have a place to create the heat and then to have a cooling agent at the same time.
And the first thing that happened was that the kings and the aristocracy found this to be a kind of magical thing. And for several centuries, if you had some pieces of what was at the time just glass, not… not crystal, but just glass, that was what you had.
I mean, in other words, [00:12:00] they didn’t have, like we have now, different sizes of glasses for a meal or different pieces. You know, this is something that is actually an invention that came much later, and it was really reserved for the rich and the elite.
It was, glass was something most people ate out of tin or wooden dishes, and glass just was not something that was distributed on, en masse. You know, it just didn’t get produced that way.
Annie: It’s hard to transport. It takes a lot to make.
Elyse: It takes a lot to make. It takes a lot to make.
So basically, through the 1300s and 1400s, that was the beginning of a lot of the industry, and it… And France very quickly developed a reputation for making beautiful glass.
Saint Louis And Royals
Elyse: And then you have, in the 1500s, interestingly enough, it’s the moment when glass becomes so important, basically in the Renaissance, that you have the very first [00:13:00] official glass making place that is called the Compagnie des Cristalleries de Saint-Louis.
Annie: Hmm.
Elyse: And it was actually created in 1576.
Annie: All right.
Elyse: It still exists. It’s not very far from Baccarat. They’re really close to one another in the same area of the Moselle. And it was called Cristallerie, even though it was glass, because they wanted people to understand that it was prestigious like in Venice.
Annie: Okay.
Elyse: It was sold to the English royalty, it was sold to the German royalty, to the Spanish royalty, but no one else.
Annie: Right, it was royalty only.
Elyse: It was really royalty only.
Annie: You just said Moselle. Yeah, the area is the Moselle area, but Baccarat itself is in the Meurthe-et-Moselle.
Elyse: It’s in the Meurthe-et-Moselle.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: Number 54.
The department 54. I think they’re next to each other, but they’re whatever… you know.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: And so, what happened was that all of this flourished until [00:14:00] one of the nasty wars that France had with its neighbors, there are so many, you know, there’s no point in going into them, but we move up almost 200 years into the beginning of the 1700s.
One of the things about this glass making that was really important was that because it was a good commerce, it was bringing money into the Kingdom of France, interestingly enough. And I had not realized that, you know. I mean, it wasn’t simply that it was inside the country. I mean, this glass was famous so that they were selling it to all the aristocrats and the royalty just about all over Western Europe. And they started having competition from a little country called Bohemia.
Annie: Oh, hmm.
Elyse: Which is, I guess now a part of the Czech Republic, right? It’s a region of the Czech Republic. The people in Bohemia, who obviously also had lots of forests and rivers, they stole literally some of the techniques from [00:15:00] Venice, and they started copying those techniques, and they started giving the French a lot of competition in terms of glass making. And so what happened was that for a period of time, because of all the wars, and especially because there were so many wars up in the northeast and up towards the frontier with Belgium and the Netherlands and things like that, a lot of the glass makers stopped producing glass.
And by the time we get to Louis XV, so this is already in the 1700s, there is a problem because the money that was being brought in by the sale of all this glass had just about stopped. And somebody decided that it was time to bring the glass making back, and this person was an archbishop.
Annie: Huh.
Elyse: He was also a very, very wealthy prince. He was a Montmorency.
The Montmorency is a [00:16:00] branch of the royalty, this is blue blood, as blue as you can possibly get, and he was the archbishop of the Lorraine area.
And he saw that there was all this wood, there was all this forest, and that it wasn’t being used anymore. And also, he wanted to bring more revenue back into the region, because he was not only the archbishop, but he was also the lord of the region under Louis XV.
Annie: Sure, yeah.
Elyse: Yeah. So he went to Louis XV, and he asked if they could have a patent, which I guess is the same as saying, “Can we have permission to reopen a glass making factory in your name?”
Annie: All right, okay.
Elyse: Okay. Kings always like that.
Annie: Sure.
Elyse: Yeah. If it’s in their name, they’re never going to say no, you know? Just, yeah, sure, you know, as long as I get money out of this, right?
Annie: Butter them up! Butter them up!
Elyse: In 1763, the Royal Verrerie of Saint Louis was created.
And it was in one of these tiny little [00:17:00] valleys. It’s in a village called Les Bitche. It looks like bitch, but it’s Bitche. And it started to thrive again, and Louis XV was extremely happy because all of a sudden, French glass was back! You know, I mean, it was literally one of those. It was like French was like… And then this strange thing happened.
Baccarat Crystal Breakthrough
Elyse: In England, of all places, there was a man named Mr. Ravenscroft, who was a glass merchant. So they were obviously making glass in England as well. I mean, they were making porcelain, they were making glass. And he had a business that was quite lucrative, but he was actually interested in the chemistry of glass.
And working– I did a lot of research, and nobody knows who is the exact person that figured this out. But under him, he had people working on different formulas for the glass.
And the reason he was doing this is because [00:18:00] he wanted to make the glass less brittle. And one of the things he discovered was, or was discovered by his group, was that by adding lead oxide to the silica and the potash and whatever other little things they put in, it made what we now call crystal. That is, it made this substance that was magnificent to look at with the reflection of the rainbow, of the prism all the time. It was much heavier, it was much less breakable. But ironically, it was easier to incise and sculpt.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: So they could start making pieces, like I’m sure everybody has an image in their mind of, a vase that’s been sculpted and the facets on it, or some kind of sculpted piece of crystal, or even in my case, these wine glasses that are all faceted. You can’t do that with glass. You can with crystal. But he kept the secret.
Annie: Okay.[00:19:00]
Elyse: He kept the secret in the 1670s in England, and he didn’t share it with the rest of Europe.
Well, this is England after all. Right? You know, and this is what they do, right?
And then somebody who was working for the Royal Verrerie of Saint-Louis almost 80 years later, who was obviously trying, must have found out something.
But anyway, there was this person named Mr. Beaufort, who was a glass maker, and he realized the same thing. So he came up with the formula that was used, and that is actually the formula that was used until the recent past in the 20th century for making crystal. And from that point on, in France, all of the royal glass was crystal.
And then at the same time, this is the end of the 1700s, you have Baccarat, which is next, literally, I don’t even know how [00:20:00] many kilometers away, but it’s not very far away.
But then you have two glass makers from the Royal Verrerie who go over to this new glass making place in the tiny little village of Baccarat, and they start producing crystal there. And it’s at this point that both places change their names so that instead of saying Verrerie, it’s Cristellerie. Yeah. And the difference, interesting enough, between the two, because they still exist, both of them, and they still produce really extraordinary pieces, and they’re still both extremely expensive and high-end, is that basically the piece, the Verrerie or the Cristellerie of Saint-Louis was the one that decided to do tableware.
And Baccarat, from the beginning, did not really do tableware. It did pieces of art, and it [00:21:00] did chandeliers, and it did objects for royalty. And it’s interesting that they split in a way to make basically both of them survived and flourished, but they were producing different kinds of things.
So the notion of art de table was invented as a concept by one of the designers at the Saint-Louis Cristellerie, and they actually put this out as a thing. They are the ones, I didn’t know this, responsible for the idea that you have a sized glass for wine, a white wine, for red wine, that for water, that you have all these different glasses, because it was a good way to sell more glasses.
Annie: Of course, yeah.
Elyse: It was a good way to sell your dishes, and it was a good way to sell all of it. So what happened was that both of them got stuck in the French Revolution.
Annie: Lot of things did, yeah.
Elyse: A lot of things did, right? They got stuck because they got shut down for a short amount of time, and then picked up starting basically in 1825. And it was [00:22:00] after 1825 that there is this revolution in what is called tableware and glassware and everything.
Inside Baccarat Museum
Annie: Right. So it’s interesting that you mentioned that didn’t do a lot of glassware at first, because you do see plenty of that when you visit the museum at Baccarat. Shall I tell you a little bit about the museum?
Elyse: Yes, please do.
Annie: It’s lovely. It took me an hour and a half to two hours. It’s not huge, but it’s very modern. It’s very well done. They have some movies that where you can see how they make the actual glass, because you can’t visit the workshops. But when you go, you learn that the brand started in 1764, like you mentioned, and to this day, they hire people that do about 50 different sorts of jobs. It’s very highly specialized.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: So you have the people who do the blowing, the people who do the colors, the people, they, all sorts of different jobs there.
And to [00:23:00] this day, they have 13 Meilleurs Ouvriers de France working for them, which is the highest number of any company in France. And they have their own school that maintains Meilleur Apprenti de France, another distinction, every year. So it’s really interesting. They have the glassblowers, which they like to call les souffleurs de rêve.
Elyse: De rêve.
Annie: Yes. So like…
Elyse: I like de rêve, yes.
Annie: The dream blowers, because they can just gather the exact quantity and do the exact pieces from the ball of fire, and their breath and all of that. It’s quite spectacular to watch the video. They have cutting people, the les sculpteurs de lumière. Isn’t that cute?
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: The sculptors of light, and then they have the engravers. That’s the most experienced.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: Cutters will become engravers.
Signature Red And Colors
Annie: The [00:24:00] gilding appeared at Baccarat in the 1830s. The gilders were called Doreuses. So the people who put on the gold, I guess.
Elyse: They put on the gold, yeah.
Annie: Yes, yes. They apply gold and polychrome enamel motifs by brush.
And then they have a famous red at Baccarat, Le Rouge a l’Or.
Elyse: Hmm.
Annie: So, the red made from gold. In 1839, they perfected, Baccarat perfected their signature red. It was made by gradually fusing clear crystal with 24 karat gold.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: Exactly 540 degrees. Of course, this is chemistry, you know…
Elyse: Right.
Annie: …all of this. And every Baccarat chandelier carries one, at least one pampille, which is a little drop of red as a signature.
So if you want to… the professionals, if you ever go to the, [00:25:00] what’s that show? The Antiques Roadshow?
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: I’m sure they know to look for that.
Elyse: Oh, I’m sure they do.
Annie: The red pampille. Yes, yes, yes. Starting in the 1830s, they started a research program on color and won a medal in 1839 for the range of hues that they could do.
And one of the things I did in Baccarat, if you go to the Eglise Saint-Remy, which is very close to Baccarat, to the museum, it’s a small town, okay? All of this is walkable. You can park somewhere and walk.
If you go to the Saint-Remy church, it was destroyed during the war, and they rebuilt it out of concrete, but they have thousands of pieces of glass in there, and all of it is Baccarat glass. So that is a spectacular church. You have to go in there because you will see all the colors, all the hues, all the different [00:26:00] things. So they have 52 Baccarat colors in 150 shades.
Elyse: That’s interesting. I actually did not know that. I mean, I know about crystal, but I did not know about the fact that Baccarat specialized really in color.
Annie: Right, right.
Elyse: In using color and things.
Annie: Yeah, yeah. They have spectacular colors.
Chandeliers And Royal Orders
Annie: They also specialize in chandeliers, as you mentioned. They were the first French crystal manufacturer to present a chandelier collection, and that was in 1827, with elements cut like gemstones. They are just gorgeous.
The Zenith chandelier, with 24 lights, was around 1850, has 1,000 hand-cut pampille. Everything is done by hand, obviously. And in 1896, when the Tsar Nicholas II wanted to electrify his candelabra, which I’m a big fan of electrifying everything, [00:27:00] so I approve, thank you, Tsar Nicholas II, Baccarat invented a hollow twisted branch, the Bambou Tors. As in tor…
Elyse: Yeah, in torsade.
Annie: Torsion. Torsion?
Elyse: Right.
Annie: And that was done to hide the electric wires.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Annie: And then King’s crystal arrived. The first royal order came in 1823, when Louis XVIII commissioned a glass service. Charles X and Louis Philippe followed as well, and Baccarat earned the nickname of Cristal des Rois, the Crystals of Kings, supplying courts from Europe to Russia to Asia, plus the Élysée Palace, of course.
And you get to see special sets that were made for state visits of many dignitaries, and they would just make a specific entire table set just for that event.
Elyse: Yes. [00:28:00] They’re famous, interestingly enough, because Saint Louis is also still making very high-end pieces, but Baccarat is the place that is famous for the services for governments and royalty.
Annie: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Elyse: They became famous for that.
Annie: And more than that, I mean, the jet set, you know? I wouldn’t be surprised if our bazillionaires that we have now in the world own Baccarat stuff.
Elyse: Maybe, yeah.
Annie: Because it is unbelievable. The Tsar’s candelabrum and the Harcourt glass ordered by Napoleon III and Eugénie de Montijo, the Juvisy glasses on the Élysée’s state tables that they have, so if you are invited to the Élysée Palace for an official dinner, they will serve you in glassware and tableware from 1899.
Elyse: Okay, I guess you can’t break it.
Annie: No, no.
Elyse: You have to watch out.
Celebrities And Design Trends
Annie: Baccarat made a special entire set for Josephine [00:29:00] Baker’s wedding.
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: Can you imagine ordering the crystal and the stuff for your wedding from Baccarat?
Now, I remember you had mentioned that she ran through money like water.
Elyse: Yeah. Oh, she did.
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: Well, that’s one of the places where she ran through a lot of money.
Marilyn Monroe had a sunburst clock, and you can see it there, or I can’t remember if the clock is there, if it’s photos of it. But anyway, I saw what it looked like.
And Kris Jenner’s glassware collection, which, you know, I mean, it’s all famous people.
From the 1868 Exposition Universelle, Baccarat drew on Anatolia, Japan, and China, and naturalist kind of flora – flora, fauna, decor – peaked with Art Nouveau, of course, around 1900.
So they were heavily influenced by the art movements, which, I mean, Nancy is, you know, [00:30:00] 80 kilometers away.
There were some women that ordered stuff. Louise Fuller, Sarah Bernhardt, Colette all ordered items from Baccarat.
And then you have the Roaring ’20s and the perfume bottles, and I know we’ve done an episode about perfume. Art Deco took over after World War II– World War I, sorry, and Baccarat showed at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, and they just, you know, they made a lot of iconic perfume bottles. All the great perfumers.
Daum and Lalique Legacy
Elyse: What’s interesting is that the artists that followed that were inspired to do work in crystal and glass, there was Mr. Daum.
Annie: Sure, yes, yes. And Rene Lalique.
Elyse: Right, Rene Lalique. And what’s really interesting is that they both were inspired by the work that they saw from both Baccarat and the other place, Saint Louis, but what they decided to do was make art objects, and they’re [00:31:00] small art objects.
And of course, one of the things I found interesting was that Art Nouveau is a form of art where it’s not necessarily compatible with crystal, so it’s interesting that they used it and they used glass.
But after both of them, their work was continued by their children afterwards, and once Art Nouveau passed, there were a lot of people pressuring them to change to new styles. Lalique is more Art Nouveau and Daum is more Art Deco, but they decided that they would keep it, and to this day, which is what? It’s 150 years after Art Nouveau actually was created, those are the pieces that they still produce, that are these magnificent pieces of crystal that are sculpted, that are unique pieces, keeping that style. So there’s something interesting about the fact that they used this material, this crystal mass.
Crystal Versus Glass Shift
Elyse: And one of the things, I don’t know if you were giving the different dates, but it’s interesting to me that in doing the reading about Baccarat, [00:32:00] at first they were doing glass, and then at some point they just decided, just like with Saint Louis, to stop and do only crystal. I mean, it’s like they moved off into this new world of crystal, you know?
Annie: Right, right, it’s different, yeah.
Elyse: It’s really, really different. And it’s really interesting to know because they still– So you were talking about the sophisticated pieces that they make in Baccarat.
Paperweights Pricey Obsession
Elyse: One of the things that they make at the Saint Louis Cristallerie, I looked this up on internet. They are the only company in the world that makes paperweights that are carved inside, the different layers of carving.
Annie: Listen, there’s amazing paperweights at Baccarat. There’s at least 100 of them.
Elyse: Are you sure that they’re Baccarat and they’re not Saint Louis?
Annie: I am sure they are Baccarat.
Elyse: They are right there, and they are absolutely stunning. I’ll put some photos.
That’s interesting, because I, what I was reading was that they say that they are the only ones that make them.
Annie: Not true. I saw them with my own eyes.
Elyse: Not true, okay.
But [00:33:00] I went online to see how much they were.
Annie: Oh, thousands and thousands.
Elyse: Thousands?
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: Thousands.
Annie: They’re incredible. You have these paperweights with, like, it looks like a meadow of flowers.
Elyse: Inside.
Annie: Inside of the paperweight.
Elyse: Yep. If I was a bazillionaire, that’s what I would want. Would you want that?
Annie: I would love a beautiful Baccarat paperweight. They are some of the most exquisite things I have ever seen.
Elyse: How big are they?
Do you know? Did you get an idea?
Annie: Oh, like the size of a fist.
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: Big fist, I guess.
Elyse: I mean, it’s really like having, it’s just a piece of sculpture, basically.
Annie: It is amazing. Unbelievable. Unbelievable stuff.
They also made perfume bottles. I was going to get to that.
Elyse: Yes, yes.
Annie: Shalimar, the bottle for Guerlain was a Baccarat. Vol de Nuit, which is a nod to Saint-Exupéry has propeller motifs. It was dedicated to the adventurous Amelia Earhart. Dali’s Roi Soleil bottle, [00:34:00] which he designed for Schiaparelli in 1946. And Chanel No. 5 of course, were red gold crystals from 2018.
So there’s showpieces that you see at the museum. They’re pieces, gorgeous, amazing pieces made for the Exposition Universelle that, I mean, you can get to it like, you know, very close. They made a Chimères carafe, an Ararona Ewer?
What’s a ewer?
Elyse: A pitcher. It’s a kind of pitcher.
Annie: Oh, it’s a pitcher. Okay.
Elyse: Yeah, because I was like, what?
Annie: I saw it, when you see it, you know what it is. But the word, I had never seen that term. They have a Charles X ewer. They have, and that one has the arms of France, and Navarre in enamel. Anyway, fantastic stuff. Fantastic stuff. I have lots of photos. Maybe I’ll do a special thing for my patrons to show all of this.
Museum Visit Takeaways
Annie: So the Baccarat Museum, really cannot recommend it more, even if, like me, I have no interest in luxury goods, [00:35:00] honestly, or fashion or anything like that. But this stuff, the craftsmanship on this stuff just blows my mind.
Elyse: You can see some of the oldest Baccarat, I think, in the Louvre.
Annie: Probably, yes.
Elyse: There is some of it where they have some of the table ware. I just find it interesting. I have to make a confession. I love art nouveau pieces, and I love drinkware that’s actually made of clear crystal, but I’m not a big fan of a lot of the very fancy pieces, like even the Murano, you know, pieces and stuff like that, even though I love, I love the idea of creating glass. To me, it’s magic, the idea that you can produce it, but I never really loved the pieces themselves, you know, that are, like, very colored and everything else.
Annie: Yeah, but when you see a chandelier that’s taller than this room here, you know, this room is two meters 10 standard height. Sorry, two [00:36:00] meters 40 or whatever. You see chandeliers that are ginormous made of thousands of pieces of this crystal. It is unbelievably beautiful. Like, I wouldn’t want anything, to do anything, yeah, I mean, anything to do with this. Just, it would stress me out to no end, to know that there’s this thing that I could bump and…
Elyse: It’s very much like looking at diamonds, actually, you know? I mean, it’s the same thing.
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Saint Louis Factory Tour
Elyse: It’s interesting because you didn’t get to the Cristallerie of Saint-Louis, which was…
Annie: No, I did not visit that. I don’t know if you can visit it.
Elyse: Yes, you can.
Annie: Okay. All right.
Elyse: And they have a museum. They have a museum, and there you can do a guided tour, so you can actually see.
Annie: Well, you could at Baccarat as well, but not of the, but not of the production.
Elyse: In Saint-Louis you can. I mean, you can see them. They take you up on a walkway.
Annie: Oh, nice.
Elyse: I actually did that in Waterford, where you actually are above. I’ve always thought it must be strange to have people who are doing very precise things, and they know that there are people somehow looking at them from [00:37:00] somewhere, you know?
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elyse: But there is a guided, it’s a guided visit. It’s actually a guided tour.
Annie: Sure.
Crystal Techniques Apprenticeships
Elyse: But they do give you a option, and again, it’s every different person does a very specialized kind of thing. There are things I didn’t know that had to do… I knew what crystal was. I knew what the difference was between crystal and glass.
But for instance, between Baccarat and Saint-Louis, they invented things that didn’t exist before, and one of the things they invented was the idea that you could take a layer of colored glass, that is, the glass that’s actually had the color made into, it’s at when it’s manufactured, and you put it on top, this is before it’s blown, actually, you put it on top of clear glass, and when it’s blown, and you can take it off when it’s still soft, and they have a special, the artists that do the incisions, and what happens is it cuts through the glass that’s colored and shows the crystal clear transparency underneath or the [00:38:00] gold underneath, and these are techniques that they invented that are just absolutely amazing to look at.
10 years of work, 10 years of apprenticeship before you pass an exam to work in either of these places.
Baccarat Town Wartime History
Annie: One other thing to mention about Baccarat that’s really interesting, I’m talking about Baccarat the town now. It’s an interesting place because on October 31st and November 1st, 1944, La voie de la deuxième division, Général Leclerc, so a French general, and his Second Armored Division, they were the first French free division to land in France at Utah Beach, on August 1st, 1944. They were serving in Patton’s Third Army, and they reached Baccarat, in the fall of 1944, and there was an attack on October 31st that was guided by the local resistance intelligence.
A woman named Marcelle Cuny guided Commandant [00:39:00] Rouvillois, these tanks around the German defenses. And the whole story is told, like, there’s a panel where you could read the whole thing.
Elyse: Are you saying that they did this to prevent it from being destroyed?
Annie: No, it was the liberation in 1944.
Elyse: But, I mean, the factory wasn’t destroyed or anything?
Annie: Oh, oh, no, it had nothing to do with the factory.
Elyse: Oh, it has nothing to do with the factory. Okay.
Annie: The factory was not destroyed.
Elyse: Oh, okay. Okay.
Annie: The church was destroyed, but the factory was not.
Anyway, you can read the story, so if you are a World War II buff, you can see that as well.
And again, the Church of Saint-Remy, is fantastic. Go in there. The town grew as a castle. It was one of the castles of the bishops of Metz, because, you know bishops, they need a castle or two.
Elyse: Absolutely.
Annie: Yeah. It was called the Tour des Voués. It still stands. Nowadays, the town largely lives on around the manufacturer, and tourism. But manufacturer is huge. The company employs about 1,200 people.
So roughly [00:40:00] 600 of them locally, and it’s by far the dominant employer in the town of about 4,000 inhabitants, okay? The population is slowly declining, and it skews kind of older.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: But, since 2025, the company has been controlled by funds managed by a Hong Kong-based Tor Investment Management Systems, with a new CEO, Laurence Nicolas, blah, blah, blah, 50 million euros investment management, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know.
Elyse: Saint-Louis was in 1989 bought up by Hermès. So it’s French.
Annie: So that one’s French, okay.
Elyse: It stayed French.
Annie: That’s good. That’s good.
I ate, I, people are going to ask me, but I ate at a place called, what was it called? Oh, I wrote it somewhere. It was a little restaurant. I’ll put it in the show notes. It wasn’t great. I mean, it, what everybody else ordered looked great, but I ordered a cordon bleu, [00:41:00] and that’s the day I decided I don’t really like cordon bleu.
Sélestat Humanist Library
Annie: So… And should you, we have two, three minutes for the Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat. Okay. Sélestat is a bigger town. It’s 20,000 people, more or less. But it has this beautiful Bibliothèque Humaniste, which is a fairly newly renovated library and museum dedicated to the life of Beatus Rhenanus. He was born in Sélestat on August 22nd, 1485. He was the son of a wealthy butcher. He lost his mother at the age of two.
Elyse: I’ve never heard about this person.
Annie: Beatus Rhenanus. After his mother died, he was given to be educated by various important people, and he entered the Latin [00:42:00] school which they had in Sélestat, which taught young boys between 6 and 12 to be proficient in Latin, and not just regurgitating Latin, but translating it, working, speaking. I guess they spoke it some too. Because of this, he then went on to Paris to further his studies, and in Paris, he made a collection, a great collection of enluminure, which are the beautiful books that are painted and with old writing and all that. And at his death, he donated all his collection of beautiful books to the town of his birth, Sélestat. And so in that Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat, because at the time, the start of the humanist kind of ideas taking over, the Renaissance sort of ideas. The town also has books that they got from the [00:43:00] bishopric in that area, because at the time, Sélestat was on and off German, you know? They had a lot of wealth. They had a lot of money. They had a lot of beautiful books, and you can see a lot of these very beautiful books, including one where a map… Let’s see, where is it? The naming of America, this is the first book to ever use the name Amerique in French for the new continent. And you can see this book. Anyway, again, I spent two hours in there. You know, you just look at all the beautiful stuff.
Elyse: So they’re behind glass.
Annie: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can’t touch them. But they do have, like, museum sorts of things where you could, it feels like you’re turning the page. You know?
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: Like, you touch a screen, and it looks like you’re turning the page, and you can see the translation, because, I mean, we’re not trained to read this text.
Elyse: No, no.
Annie: Okay? So, you see the translation and you can ask for it in French [00:44:00] or in English or in German or whatever you want. Well worth a stop at the Bibliothèque Humaniste de Sélestat, and the town of Sélestat is gorgeous itself.
Apparently, Charlemagne spent a Christmas in Sélestat. Can’t remember what year.
700-something.
Anyway, Charlemagne spent Christmas at Sélestat.
Elyse: I have no idea where. I’ve never… I lived in the Vosges, but I don’t think I ever-
Annie: It’s due north of Colmar, about-
Elyse: Okay, so it’s the other side. It’s on the other side.
Annie: Maybe 20 kilometers north of Colmar.
Elyse: So it’s Alsatian, okay.
Annie: So on your way from Bakara to Colmar, if you’re going to do that, you will go by Sélestat, and you should stop, is what I’m trying to say.
Okay.
More Glassmaking Destinations
Elyse: Let’s just mention a couple of things about the other places you can do glass visiting. One of them, of course, is in Nancy. You have the Daum Cristallerie, which is [00:45:00] in Nancy because, Jean Daum, who actually had been a glassmaker at Saint-Louis, decided he wanted to go to Nancy and make art with the crystal. It’s the material itself. And so he set up his studio, his small factory in Nancy, and that is where you can go to see not just the pieces that, of course, are still on sale, because there are, but actually the history and the small museum is in the same big building in Nancy.
And Mr. Rene Lalique, he has his house of Lalique in a tiny town called Wingen-sur-Moder.
Annie: Wingen?
Elyse: Wingen.
Annie: How do you spell that?
Elyse: Wingen, W-I-N-G-E-N.
Annie: Okay.
Elyse: Sur-Moder, M-O-D-E-R.
Annie: Okay, okay.
Elyse: In the Vosges, and I regret enormously that the year I lived in the Vosges, I never went there. I didn’t know that it [00:46:00] existed.
Annie: Well, you’re going to have to go back.
Elyse: I have to go back. Because Lalique is, of course, famous for perfume bottles and little art objects and delicate little figurines and things like that, and they are still produced there. The Daum is still produced in Nancy. The Lalique is still produced there, and all of this is in a relatively small region, all of this wonderful crystal and glass making, you know?
Annie: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elyse: It’s just absolutely incredible. Yeah.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Wrap Up
Annie: I didn’t know that you had that much to share with us about crystals, but that’s great. But I had also prepared some stuff about Épinal, which I visited, and I wanted to give some details, and Pont-à-Mousson. There won’t be time to do this today, but I will do something special for patrons or something.
Elyse: Do, do, do Épinal.
Annie: Or maybe on another episode. I don’t know.
Elyse: Do it.
Annie: So much to talk about, Elyse.
Elyse: So much to talk about. Now I can’t wait to go and see all [00:47:00] this stuff again.
Annie: Yeah, and I really should go to the Saint-Louis one. That sounds-
Elyse: You should go to the Saint-Louis one. They have over 2,000 pieces.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: And it really covers the history from before it was royal, before it was crystal, all the way up through, and… we should go together.
Annie: Well, yes, I would like that. Are you ready to go that far from home, Elyse?
Elyse: It’s just, it’s a whole thing about the Vosges, you know. We’ll talk about that another time.
Annie: All right, Elyse. Merci beaucoup.
Elyse: De rien, Annie.
Annie: Au revoir.
Elyse: Au revoir.
Thank you Patrons!
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. And to support Elyse, go to [00:48:00] patreon.com/elysart. I just had my monthly Zoom with patrons this week. It was wonderful to see all of you.
SNCF Holiday Ticket Tips
Annie: Are you planning Christmas in France? Well, SNCF tickets go on sale on September 30th. Here’s a date to put on your calendar. September 30th is when the SNCF opens reservations for a lot of the holiday season trains.
For TGV INOUI and Intercités, you’ll be able to book trips from December 13th through January 6th. Ouigo opens much farther ahead, all the way through July 2nd, 2027. TER trains are a little different because the booking window depends on the region, usually somewhere between three and five months ahead.
I know it’s a mess, but we like to complicate everything we can in France, and definitely the SNCF does that [00:49:00] for us.
Some international trains also open for booking on September 30th, including TGV Lyria and other TGV services into Europe for travel through March 28th, 2027.
Now, do you have to book the minute sales open?
No. But if you’re traveling right around Christmas or New Year and your dates are fixed, I wouldn’t wait too long. You’ll have a better choice of trains, better odds of finding seats together, and usually a wider range of fares.
Lesson of the story, subscribe to the emails from SNCF that will let you know when new tickets come online for sale. Imagine if airlines did that and gave you discounts just for reading their emails. We would all read those emails religiously.
Pope Visit in Secular France
Annie: This is how secular France turns out for the Pope. For a country full of atheists and agnostics, [00:50:00] France sure treats the Pope as a superstar.
Now, I should be careful with that line because the numbers are a little more complicated. France does not ask about religion in the census, so we rely on surveys.
The most reliable one comes from the INSEE, the National Statistics Office, and INED, the National Demographic Institute. In 2019 through 2029, among adults under 60 living in mainland France, 51% said they had no religion, 29% said they were Catholic, 10% Muslim, and 10% another religion.
But no religion isn’t the same as atheist.
That group also includes people who believe in God but don’t belong to any church. And the survey stopped at age 59, and older people are more likely to be Catholic, so across all adults, the no [00:51:00] religion share would be somewhat lower.
Another survey by Ipsos asked the question differently and found that a third of French people call themselves atheist. So not quite a country full of atheists, but a very secular country all the same.
And yet, on Saturday, September 26th, Pope Leo XIV said mass on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and a huge crowd came.
France 3, that’s a TV station, reported somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people, depending on which of their articles you read.
France Trois also reported that the night before he was at Stade de France for a gathering with young Catholics.
Not everyone who wanted to be there could make it. Some parishes organized screenings so people could follow the mass together.
France Trois went to one of them at a place called Forum 104 in Paris, where about 20 parishioners [00:52:00] watched on two big screens, sang along with the hymns, and applauded when the Archbishop of Paris thanked the Pope for coming.
There was Pierre, who’s 91, and his wife Brigitte, who’s 89. Pierre said that at his age, he couldn’t have lasted very long standing on the Champs-Élysées, and that watching with a group beats sitting at home in front of the TV because, yes, it was also on the TV. I think that’s very sensible, really.
There was also Denis, who came all the way from Lyon. He hadn’t registered in advance, so he was sent to a giant screen at Porte Maillot, but he was so far back he couldn’t see much, so he ended up going to the parish screening instead.
What did people want to hear from the pope?
Well, mostly peace. Pierre pointed out that the war in Ukraine isn’t that far from us, that Gaza is in ruins, and that there are many other wars nobody talks about. He hoped the pope would get more people to think about real problems and worry a little less about their own comfort. [00:53:00] Others had no particular expectations.
A woman named Lucy said she just wanted to be moved by his words. The mass ended a little before 5:00 PM, and the pope went straight to the Orly Airport to fly to Lourdes in the Pyrenees for the next part of his visit to France.
So secular France? Yes. But when the pope comes to town, hundreds of thousands still show up.
Newsletter and Next Episode
Annie: If you want a short recap of what came out this week in France, travel, news, new episodes, what I’m paying attention to, sign up for my free newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast
Annie: Next week on the podcast, Marseille, France’s oldest city, with Emilie Bonnel from the Marseille Tourist Office, and food writer and tour guide Alexis Steinman.
We cover winter visits, [00:54:00] bouillabaisse, pastis, and why Marseille deserves better than its reputation.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:55:00][00:56:00]
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Episode PageCategories: Alsace and Lorraine, French History