Dominique Zanardi, Musée de le Bataille de la Somme / Battle of the Somme Museum

this image from the Facebook-account of
Le Tommy, Café du Souvenir

At first glance, the building in the image above looks like an average café-restaurant, but upon closer inspection one sees that it not only bears the name Le Tommy, but is also referred to as Musée 1914-1918. 

The building is located in Poziéres, a village with a few hundred inhabitants in the Somme region in the north of France. More than a hundred years ago, this part of France was hit by the First World War, which in the Somme area was mainly a trench war. However, around Poziéres from 25 July to 7 August 1916 the war turned into a gigantic battle that led to many deaths and almost completely destroyed the village.

In the Somme area there are numerous memorial monuments and cemeteries dedicated to this war, Dominique Zanardi, owner of the café-restaurant, has made in his own way a special contribution to this series of places dedicated to memories of World War I.

a view of the area behind the cafe that was transformed in trenches
this image and the next six are screenprints from the 
first video in the documentation

Life and works

Zanardi was born in the early 1960s in Albert, a town located 7 km south-west of Poziéres. This city also houses an official Museum about the war in the Somme area.

At the age of twelve he started exploring the fields where the war had raged, in order to collect scraps of metal, which he sold to the local scrap dealer. That's how he got money to buy a nice moped.

On his trips through the former war zone he met visitors from England, who told him about the war that had raged there. They showed him the cemeteries and told him about the soldiers who belonged to their family. 

Young Dominique, who had learned some English at school, became increasingly proficient in speaking English and he got first-hand information about what had happened during those war years.

After his younger years he would continue to avidly collect items reminiscent of the war in the Somme region. Shovels, pieces of grenade, other ammunition, rifles, cannons, it became an extensive collection.

He went to work in the world of cafes and restaurants. The most important moment came in 1995. when he, around 35 years old, took over the Café de la Victoire, which had existed in Pozières since 1922.

Reopened in 1996 as Café-restaurant Le Tommy, this place, where visitors were welcome, offered him every opportunity to do something with his collection of memorabilia relating to the Somme war.

The indoor space became partly a museum about the war and the outdoor space was transformed into a faithful replica of a trench area.

The trench area

The four photos above and the three below give an impression of the outdoor area at the rear of the café-restaurant, where the world of the war is depicted on a life-size scale.

The image at the very top shows that the terrain is so extensive that the trenches, which include both those of Germany and those of the Allies, with no man's land in between, can be depicted realistically.

The next two images show a cannon and the collection of thousands of grenade casings, meticulously stacked together along a wall. The use of grenades during the battle in and around Pozières was very intense, sometimes 140 grenades fell in a single minute.

The next image of a soldier with a gun shows how much Zanardi was able to portray this person realistically. The barricades made of coils of iron wire in the following image also demonstrate this ability to express the reality of trench warfare.

Finally, the two images around give an impression of the way in which the trenches themselves are depicted. 

Here too, one is struck by the specific feelings of constriction that the creations convey.

The interior

The image below shows part of the interior of the museum attached to the cafe-restaurant. The walls are filled with gigantic black and white photos of soldiers and there are all kinds of weapons.

The bar in the the cafe-restaurant is standing on grenade casings.

Visitors from Australia

The group of Allied soldiers stationed near Pozieres during the Somme war, was part of the Australian army, which means that many of the visitors to the Café-restaurant/Museum are from Australia.

a view of the interior
image from the Facebook page of Le Tommy

Documentation

* Article (January 2018) in journal Ouest-France, with pictures of the site

* Article (February 2024) in journal France Bleu, also with pictures 

* Article on Wikipedia with details about the battle of Pozières

* Facebook account of Le Tommy, Café du Souvenir

* Tripadvisor has a series of photos of the café and the site 

Videos

* Video (2013, YouTube, 2'57") by Stuart Curry

 

* Another video (February 2024, YouTube, 4'25"), with recent scenes of the trenches

Dominique Zanardi

Musée de le Bataille de la Somme

91 Route d’Albert

80300 Pozières, dept Somme, region Hauts de France, France

visitors welcome

Sirkka Turkki, Ruusulinna Taidepuisto / Art park Rose Castle

pictures are screenprints from the first video in the documentation,
published here in agreement with the maker Sirkka Turkki

On the southern coast of Finland in the Uusimaa region, about 35 kilometers east of Helsinki. there is the municipality of Porvoo. It is the second oldest city in Finland, currently with around 50.000 inhabitants, about a third of whom have Swedish as their mother tongue.

The information panel shown above, installed along the Sillvikintie road, in the outskirts of the municipality, indicates that there is an art environment at that location.

Life and works

This art environment, referred to as Ruusulinna Taidepuisto (Art Park Rose Castle) was developed from the early 2000s by Sirkka Turkki, who was born in the mid-1940s.

After primary and secondary school, she studied at the University of Helsinki and at the JAMK University of Applied Science in Jyvaskyla in Central Finland, where she became familiar with applied arts. 

Equipped with this knowledge, she was able to become a teacher in areas such as art education and creative activities, but she was also active in the field of physiotherapy. In addition to her professional work, she was also active as a poet, a painter and a ceramist.

In the early 2000s, while looking for a summer home, she found the spot where the art environment has now emerged, an outdoor area that also included a country house that had been unused for years and needed major renovation.

The two-hectare area which exudes a pleasant wooded atmosphere, now also houses a guest house and there are four different outbuildings, which are now full with a variety of creations. made by Sirkka Turkki over the course of her life.

As the image above shows, there is a large miniature city filled with a large number of handmade wooden houses, which is set up in the living room of the country house. All these buildings were made from pieces of wood from a wooden wall near an old farm.

There is also a collection of masks, as shown above left, which fills a section of the wall of one of the buildings.

The images above and below right show parts of the extensive collection of ceramics that SirkkaTurkki has produced over the years.

Finally, the image at the bottom left shows the collection of marionettes and glove puppets, hanging on a wall.

Indoors, the walls are decorated with drawings and paintings made by Sirkka Turkki, in short, a large number of forms of artistic expression are generously represented in this art environment.

Below, to conclude the variety of indoor creations, is another image of a sculpture of a lady, who looks a bit like Sirka Turkki.

The two images below give an impression of the creative constructions that adorn the outdoor space, first a collection of bird heads on sticks, and then an arrangement of arches, axes and other decorations on trees.

In the outdoor area there are also spatial works of art that depict world religions, fairy tales and myths.

Sirkka Turkki, now in her late seventies, so far had a varied and versatile life. For example, she gave more than two hundred readings of the poetry she wrote. 

Another noteworthy activity of hers is that she volunteered at an orphanage in Nepal, where, during a trip through the area, she took the opportunity to free young girls from the slavery in which they had ended up. They were admitted to the orphanage, now have an independent existence and Sirkka Turkki is still in contact with some of them.

Documentation

* Article (June 2022) on the website of newspaper Itäväylä

* Article by Heini Heikkilä on the website of MSL. the Finnish National Cultural Association

* Another entry on the MSL website, with some photos of the art environment

Videos

* Video (2022, YouTube, 5'25") by Sirkka Turkki

* Video (September 2023, YouTube, 2'45")  by Maasedun

SirkkaTurkey,

Art park Rose Castle,

Sillvikintie 172,

06750 Porvoo, Uusimaa region, Finland

the site can be visited In the summer, 

visits of individuals or groups (max 6 persons) must be arranged in advance (see info).

small entrance fee

Colin Stokes, Colin's barn

pictures are screenprints from the videos in the documentation

The complex of buildings pictured above partly includes living space and for a larger part stables and storage facilities for hay. It is located in an area of grass near the hamlet of Chedglow, part of the village of Crudwell with about 1000 inhabitants in the Wiltshire region, about 85 miles west of London.

Life and works

This complex, known as Colin's Barn, or Hobbit House, was created by Colin Stokes, who was born in 1945 and who not only became skilled in making stained glass windows, but also went into farming as a keeper of a flock of sheep.

To properly care for his flock of sheep, in 1989 he built with his own hands a simple rectangular sheepfold, using chunks of Cotswold stone found lying around in the surrounding field.

This was the start of a construction project that would keep him busy in the years that followed. His singular architecture was built of stacked stones, decorated with cement on the inside to provide strength.

He built a hay warehouse and other structures functional to his business, but he also created -as depicted in above image- a two-story living area where he could stay with his flock when necessary.

The images of this temporary accommodation structure show that the shelter was higher and more extensive than all other structures.

The building had two floors and was equipped with turrets and dovecotes. Inside there was a spiral staircase from the ground floor to the first floor, where also was a simple bedroom, which Stokes could use to spend the night during the lambing season.

And then there were all kinds of narrow stairs, fences and attics, all constructed single-handedly.

The images above and below show that Stokes  had artistic skills, which allowed him to provide some rooms with beautifully decorated arches and windows inlaid with stained glass. 

The information available on the internet does not indicate whether Stokes had any professional training in this regard.

​

In 2000, a marble quarry was opened near Colin Stokes building. The noise that this business entailed prompted him reluctantly selling his property and moving elsewhere, leaving his project in the good condition it was in at the time.

In 2013 it was reported that Stokes, then aged 68, was farming sheep, poultry and angora rabbits near Moffat in Scotland. 

As far as is known, Stokes died in 2021

The barn is a little difficult to find, and is on private land. The current owner of the site does not appreciate visitors and chases them away when he is around. A sign discourages visitors, but it doesn’t seem to work, because there are various reviews from visitors on the internet.

Documentation

* Article on website Atlas Obscura

* Article (November 2013) on Mail Online

* Article (January 2021 by Hugh Williams, with pictures that give a good impression of the stacked stones in Stokes' creations

Videos

* Video (4'52", May 2021, YouTube) by RPM Adventure

Video (17'41", 2022, YouTube) by Partners of the Forgotten World

Colin Stokes

Colin's barn

Chedglow, Wiltshire, United Kingdom

address not available

visitors not welcome

Abbé Clovis Vannobel and anonymous workmen, Décoration du pavillon des Iris / Iris pavilion decoration

this image and the next two as on the website
Habitants-Paysagistes, published here in agreement with the
photographer Francis David

The facade decorated with a tree as shown above can be seen in a street in the municipality of Steenwerck, a little town with some 3400 inhabitants, located in North West France, near the border with Belgium. 

In the field of art environments the town is known for Arthur Vanabelle's La ferme aux avions (The airplane farm), a site located in the outskirts of the municipality until around 2015. The local Musée de la vie rurale (Museum of rural life) was donated a representative number of creations after Vanabelle's death.

The building with the decorated wall was built on the site of a hotel that was destroyed during the First World War. Subsequently, two breweries were built on the site, which went bankrupt during the Second World War. A director of one of the breweries had a country house there.

After the war, the complex was purchased by a social organization led by Abbot Clovis Vannobel, in order to establish there a rest home for women, initially only in the director's house, then also in one of the breweries after it had been renovated.

the abbot is depicted among the branches

The part of the rest home in the director's house was named Les Iris, referring to the numerous flowers of this species that bloomed in the nearby park-like grounds.

Restoring the facade

In the early 1970s, the facade of the Pavilion Les Iris was restored. Then it was given its characteristic decoration with a tree, an idea by Abbot Vannobel who saw the shape in his imagination.

Two workers, who did maintenance work for the rest home, helped realize the idea. The wall was treated with linseed oil and zinc white was used to make the wall nice and smooth. After the preparatory work, a sketch of the tree was drawn on the wall and colored in a dark shade against a light blue speckled background.

It turned out to be a successful project that is still present today.

After the rest home closed in 1976 due to financial problems, the municipality of Steenwerck became owner of the buildings. Some were converted into apartments and other accommodations. 

The Pavillon des Iris was completely restored and refurbished. Since 2010 it houses the regional tourist office.

Abbé Clovis Vannobel and anonymous workmen

Iris pavilion decoration

3 Grande Rue

Steenwerck, dept Nord, region Hauts-de-France, France

can be seen from the street

Google Streetview

Giovanni Masiero, Giardino con sculture in metallo / Garden with metal sculptures

this picture and the next four are screenprints
from the videos in the documentation

Salzano is a community on the mainland of northern Italy, part of the Metropolitan City of  of Venice, located some 24 km from the famous island with the same name.

Life and works

In this community there is an art environment with a variety of creations made by Giovanni Masiero (September 12, 1933 - March 7, 2017), who was a carpenter by profession and made the creations after he retired.

 

So far, there were no reviews on the internet about the size of this art environment and the manner in which it was created. As far as could be determined, local and regional newspapers also paid no attention to his creative work. Only the two videos in the documentation were available for information

Thanks to these two short videos (2014) on YouTube, available in this post, it was possible to get a visual impression of Masiero's creations.

Above, Masiero is pictured standing in his workshop.

However, almost simultaneously with the publication of this post, an article by Giada Carraro about the site appeared in her new website Bric-à-Brac Italia.

The original text about Masiero's site has therefore been adjusted and now appears in a new version.

Giada Carraro visited the art environment in 2015 and was warmly received by Masiero.

At that time the site had almost certainly reached its full size, since Masiero was in his early 80s and would die in March 2017.

Giada's article shows that in addition to the metal creations depicted in this post, numerous other, sometimes smaller characters also have a found a place in the site, such as a woman with a bouquet of flowers, a camel, a turtle and a deer. There is also a (miniature) spaceship. ​

Masiero's daughter, who currently lives in the house, prefers not to receive visitors, which is why the address of the site is not stated

Documentation

* Article by Giada Carraro on her new website Bric-à-Brac Italia

Videos

* Video (3'15", YouTube, 2014) by Artstucdecor 

* Another video (1'04", YouTube, 2014), also by Artstucdecor

Giovanni Masiero

Garden with metal sculptures

Marghera, region Veneto, Italy

preferably no visitors