--- title: "A Paris Mattress Maker: Episode 1" url: https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-1/ description: "The story of a mattress maker in Paris and the network of traditional bedding makers in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Episode 1." lang: en-US updated: 2026-10-07 translations: fr: https://le-briand.fr/musee/chronique-matelassier/episode-1/ source: https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-1.md --- [Back to the chronicle contents](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/) # A Mattress Maker in the Faubourg: Episode 1 Published: March 7, 2020 Updated: October 1, 2023 Author: Patrice Sébille ![Old photograph: mattress makers at work on a Paris quay, at the foot of a stone staircase, wool spread on the ground](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2020/03/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-1-1.jpg) I had made a commitment: **to tell the story of the Le Briand mattress maker and the business founded in 1880**. In doing so, I would also have to tell my own story at the head of the workshop, along with changes in the trade and in people’s habits… It began when I posted a photograph from my archives on the Facebook page of [La Fabrique de l’Histoire](https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-fabrique-de-lhistoire). By “archives,” I mean a motley accumulation assembled haphazardly over the years: **I do not have a collector’s temperament**. But **the other members of the group responded so warmly** that I became caught up in it. When I learned that the France Culture program had begun just as I was putting myself forward to take over the company, **the coincidence unsettled me**. Remembering the serials that [Mr. Laurentin](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Laurentin) regularly wove into his program, I modestly decided to create my own, right here. So I begin… and I do not know where! Or rather, I do not know when. There certainly was a coincidence in September 1999, but I have to admit that, for me, it was not the real beginning: **there was a before**, and I cannot simply leave it out. And **before that before**, there was yet another preamble, itself preceded only slightly by… Good grief, if I start unraveling this thread, I will have to discuss my parents’ wedding, the dead of the Great War, Constantine’s conversion… Adam and Eve… Heavens, claiming to be a historian is much harder than I imagined! Even though I have the best witness imaginable at hand—myself—and aspire to little more than a simple company autobiography, I find myself trapped by **a subject far broader than I first estimated**, with milestones that are uncertain to say the least. What could I do? Take the plunge and make a clean break: **this story would begin in 1998 with a dismissal**. There! ## The other episodes of the chronicle ![Old postcard of the Passage Vandamme in Paris: a mattress on trestles in front of a wooden fence](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2020/03/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-2.jpg) ### 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? [Read episode 2](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-2/) ![Old photograph of a vaulted workshop: a nun and women workers in front of stacks of mattresses](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2020/03/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-3.jpg) ### 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. [Read episode 3](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-3/) ![Old photograph of a Parisian bedding shop, a family posing on the doorstep](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2026/10/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-4-sans-filigrane.jpg) ### 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. [Read episode 4](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-4/) ![Old photograph: mattress makers carding wool in a courtyard, in front of striped mattresses](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2020/03/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-5.jpg) ### 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. [Read episode 5](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-5/) ![Old photograph: a woman mattress maker at work in a cobbled courtyard, a mattress stretched on its frame](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2026/10/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-6-sans-bord.jpg) ### 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. [Read episode 6](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-6/) ![Old postcard: mattress makers on the quays of the Seine in Paris](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2026/10/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-7-sans-filigrane.jpg) ### 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. [Read episode 7](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-7/) ![Old photograph: mattress makers at work in a Paris street, next to a pile of wool](https://img.le-briand.fr/uploads/2020/03/matelassier-paris-histoire-musee-fabrication-matelas-laine-sommier-tapissier-episode-8.jpg) ### 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. [Read episode 8](https://le-briand.fr/en/museum/mattress-maker-chronicle/episode-8/) If this first chapter, where everything begins with a dismissal, leaves you wondering where it led, we invite you to : [Contact us](https://le-briand.fr/en/contact/) [Visit us](https://le-briand.fr/en/address/) …and we will be delighted to introduce you to the workshop that eventually grew from this uncertain beginning.