All products are independently selected by our editors. If you purchase something, we may earn a commission.
Long ago the Celts were considered barbarians. Indeed, the Roman name itself – galli – meant just that. But in the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described the people who were pushed by the Romans out to the fringes of Britain and France’s northwestern peninsula as dressing flamboyantly. If Yves Dussin is anything to go by, the tradition still holds strong. Wearing baggy corduroys and a sleeveless cardigan, and sporting a braided beard and long grey ponytail, which is topped with a woollen beret, Dussin is a 74-year-old artist living in Audierne, a pretty town tucked in among the folds of the rugged Atlantic coast of Brittany.
The sea, it transpires, has played a big role throughout his life. ‘I was born in Brest, where my bedroom overlooked the port,’ he says. ‘Along with my great-grandfather, grandfather and father, I did military service with the navy. I then studied in Paris and became an art teacher in Normandy. After 20 years, I took a sabbatical, sailing across the Atlantic with my wife, Solange, and our children on an old gaffer boat.’ The trip did little to satisfy his hunger – quite the opposite, in fact. ‘I worked for two more years, but it was very difficult,’ he says. ‘And so we bought a bigger boat and spent longer abroad. I taught again for five years and finally retired at 58, continuing my travels.’
One such trip involved a red 2CV, multiple ferries and what might be called an epiphany. ‘Solange and I went to Iceland, visiting Ireland, Scotland, Orkney, Shetland and the Faroe Islands along the way,’ says Dussin. It was while crossing Shetland that they discovered something quite remarkable, an old tradition that would inspire them hugely over the intervening years. While undoubtedly beautiful, the Shetland Islands are sorely lacking in trees. ‘The sailors respect wood because there isn’t much there,’ says Dussin. ‘You must take good care of the boat.’ And so, if a boat becomes unseaworthy, the next logical step is to flip it over and create a home – or workshop, or retreat, or whatever one might desire. Built on a stone foundation, these upturned boats are anything but barbaric. Their bewildering charm lies not only in their incongruous nature, set among a raw and forbidding landscape, but also in their low asymmetrical slopes, which bulge out from bow to stern, like a swimming cap that’s pulled on tight. Two years after returning to Brittany, the couple conducted some thorough research. ‘We returned to the Shetlands and met some wonderful people,’ says Dussin. ‘They always greeted us with tea and cake, and helped us with finding upturned boats.’
Meanwhile, back home, Dussin discovered that Brittany had once had a similar tradition, one exclusive to the Finistère coast. The boats, however, had long since disappeared, the most recent document of these local phenomena a 1926 film by Jean Epstein. ‘The tradition had been forgotten,’ explains Dussin. ‘There was no heritage like the Shetlands, which has an upturned boat in a museum. People didn’t believe us.’
The history of these boats – or pigouillers – is steeped in lore and romance. Marins paysans (roughly translating as ‘peasant sailors’) consisted mostly of women who collected seaweed at low tide. Returning to the shore, they would burn the seaweed to obtain soda ash for the production of soap. During this process, they would upturn their boats and use them as a makeshift shelter, a place where families could eat and sleep. And so Dussin decided to make his own, inspired in part by walks with one of his granddaughters. ‘I thought it would be useful to have a place to rest and drink hot chocolate,’ he says. ‘There was somewhere at the marina that repaired wooden boats. Waiting for me was a boat built in 1950, once used for transporting lobster traps. It had been damaged in a storm and there was a big hole. It was too much to restore, so I removed the motor and took it by tractor to a small plot of land.’
A green strip the size of a tennis court leads directly down to a rocky shore, which is accessed by a small wooden gate set in the middle of a lichen-covered wall. Waves crash loudly in the enveloping mist, and the grass is weighed down by a burden of dewdrops. Dussin, however, remains calm and dry. ‘The boat was turned over and supported on stilts, and a wooden base built underneath,’ he explains. ‘It was then sealed, and the whole thing covered and waterproofed.’
Hunched down at the top of the strip, overlooked by farmhouses to one side and a patchwork of allotments to the other, the boat is pleasingly bigger than it looks. Used as a weekend retreat, it could, if required, serve as a rudimentary home. It boasts a small double bed, a single gas stove, a hammock, a heater complete with a chimney, and a table surrounded by benches. Many of the objects were foraged with his two granddaughters, Rose and Iris, for whom the place has become a dreamlike sanctuary. ‘We often go fishing for mackerel,’ says Dussin. ‘The girls bring things back to the boat, such as shells, crab claws and driftwood, which we sometimes draw or paint.’
The driftwood – like the dolphin bone hanging from the ceiling – is usually found at sea and then displayed along the boat’s white walls. The mackerel, however, is destined for the fire, cooked outside on a large stone pit in the centre of the strip, where parties involving violins, guitars and an accordion often take place. ‘I now have a small fishing boat built in Audierne in 1962,’ says Dussin, ‘the last of its kind with a little motor. I’ve learned to fish with traps and every time we pass the lighthouse, riding the waves which are glistening with sunlight, I feel the same strong emotions and sense of adventure.’
The true legacy of the Celts – whoever they were – is unknowable. No written records exist, and any notion of a unified people evaporates like spume on seawater. Even so, their influence is everywhere, their art and legends dispersed across the continent, changing the cultural landscape forever. Whatever the truth may be, here in Brittany a local tradition is revived, one which, museum or no museum, and in one form or another, will hopefully likewise live on.
A version of this article also appeared in the April 2019 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers. Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
