Apprenticeships in France

I found today’s article absolutely fascinating… I had no idea that this went on.

and this is the French link, which parents and adults alike might find useful.

https://www.compagnons-du-devoir.com/

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The Compagnons are one of the French economy’s secret weapons. I was impressed when I visited our local carpenter’s workshop to find one of his employees had brought all his scale models of different styles of roofing and timber frame building with him, and they were proudly displayed on a shelf high above his workbench. Even for those who don’t go through the Compagnonnage, there are some specialised schools that provide a fantastic grounding in the trades - one for building trades at Felletin in Limousin, for instance.

For anyone interested in the various trades, there are a number of museums: we visited the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France museum in Bourges, which had an exhibition on knife making - a very interesting couple of hours spent looking at different kinds of knives and watching a video on how pocket knives are put together. More info at http://www.la-spar.org/compagnonnage-mof. There’s also a museum in Paris.

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Thanks for the extra info Andrea… I think this scheme offers an absolutely marvellous opportunity…

We went to a compagnon museum a few years ago mainly focused on the carpenters who made roof structures. A fascinating afternoon for me as I am a hobby furniture maker. I think the museum was near Macon
Wonderful models were on display

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Thanks Stella, for linking this… Didn’t mean to create redundancy. I’d searched SF for ‘compagnon’ thinking apprenticeship wasn’t the correct search term. Learning experience #3,734,212. :slight_smile:

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