Old photograph: mattress makers at work on a Paris quay, at the foot of a stone staircase, wool spread on the ground

Episode 1

Patrice Sébille had promised to tell the story of the Le Briand company, founded in 1880, and his own as head of the workshop, in the spirit of the serials on La Fabrique de l’Histoire. The question was where to begin. It would begin with a dismissal, in 1998.

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Old postcard of the Passage Vandamme in Paris: a mattress on trestles in front of a wooden fence

Episode 2

Out of work, he lends his brother a hand turning a workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine into an apartment. On the floor below, a profitable mattress maker is running at full speed, yet doomed to close for lack of a buyer. What if someone did something to stop it?

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Old photograph of a vaulted workshop: a nun and women workers in front of stacks of mattresses

Episode 3

Burned by two failed successions, Jacques Le Briand agrees to judge him on his work. First day at the workshop, September 1999: the beginner is slow, hopelessly slow. Among his friends, though, everyone already sees him as the man saving a business more than a century old.

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Old photograph of a Parisian bedding shop, a family posing on the doorstep

Episode 4

With no office, and still hiding his situation from his children, he fills in his paperwork in the cafés of the neighborhood. At Le Jean Bart, which becomes “Thierry’s,” cabinetmakers, upholsterers, an accountant and a lawyer end up adopting him. For the first time in his life, he has drinking buddies.

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Old photograph: mattress makers carding wool in a courtyard, in front of striped mattresses

Episode 5

Taking over a business is not just a matter of writing a check. A compulsory training course, the trade register, an avalanche of forms: in 1999, becoming a business owner is an obstacle course. By late November, on the eve of a new millennium, he is about to turn his life upside down.

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Old photograph: a woman mattress maker at work in a cobbled courtyard, a mattress stretched on its frame

Episode 6

Everything is ready for January 1, 2000, except the loan, which still hasn’t come through. On the first Monday of the year 2000, he finds himself running an unauthorized workshop. And when the bank changes its terms at the last minute, he raises the money from his family in just over 24 hours.

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Old postcard: mattress makers on the quays of the Seine in Paris

Episode 7

He had looked at the wool mattress with an engineer’s eye, won over by the ingenuity of the craft. A large bed made for his wife and left under the Christmas tree shows him something else: this trade provides well-being. Now alone at the helm, he realizes how much he still has to learn.

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Old photograph: mattress makers at work in a Paris street, next to a pile of wool

Episode 8

Some of his upholsterer clients are past retirement age and miss the bustling Faubourg of their youth. Getting to know them, he discovers craftsmen who are in no hurry to retire, stay sharp and greet his arrival as that of a young man. Since then, that breed of craftsman has all but disappeared.

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A Mattress Maker in the Faubourg: The Serial