Postcards
Old-time trades?
Discover them with postcards!
Technological developments have sounded the death knell for many professions. Grinder, clog maker or lamplighter are some of them. Postcards enable us to rediscover these forgotten jobs carried out by talented craftsmen. Let’s discover these old-time trades with postcards! Lamplighter This is a profession which is no longer relevant today and which nevertheless had its heyday at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th. When Saint-Exupéry depicts this astonishing character on the fifth planet in his book «The Little Prince», he writes poetically: « When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he
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puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.»» The lamplighter appeared during the industrial revolution at the end of the 17th century. The function was initially to light lanterns with candles. Street lamps appeared in Paris in 1766, a century later. They would be the invention of the abbot Matherot de Preigny and Mr Bourgeois de Châteaublanc.
