The Glassworks
huile sur toile, 116×89 cm
From the 16th century to the 18th century, the forest of Sainte-Croix, like most forests in Ariège, housed glassworks whose “master glassmakers,” primarily Protestants, were persecuted following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the tyrant Louis XIV. Glassworks were destroyed at that time, and the privileges granted by Charles VII to these noble families ruined by the Hundred Years’ War were called into question. “Around 1715, the master of the Mauvezin glassworks (of Sainte-Croix) was Octave de Grenier du Sarat, father of the three Grenier brothers beheaded for their faith,” reports Gustave Ducos in his memoir “Sainte-Croix and its Monastery.” During the “Réveillées” (the name for the production periods during winter), the families of Verbizier or Grenier produced bottles, hourglasses, jugs, and particularly glasses that had the reputation of shattering if poison was poured into them… Christine Miramont notes in her work on glassworks that the ruins of the Porteteny glassworks, which belonged to the Verbizier family, and that of Labourdette, which was part of the Grenier family, can still be found, lost in the Royal Forest of Sainte-Croix de Volvestre. But only the heron still holds the secret of the glassmakers…
