I get a surge of quiet excitement, and a little hyperventilated, when I see something unexpected at a flea market, and hear the price is something I can afford. But I mustn’t let the vendor register my delight: that would spoil any chance of haggling.
I spotted this used orange Le Creuset casserole dish at a flea market in Paris a few years ago. It was modern, streamlined, gorgeous, affordable, and a style I’d never seen before. The vendor mentioned it was Raymond Loewy for Le Creuset. Right, I thought privately, surely some exaggeration? I didn’t want to look surprised, lest it spoil my haggling.
And yet it looked like a Raymond Loewy design, as streamlined as his trains. Whoever designed it, I had to have it. We needed a cast-iron pot at home, too.
Taking it back home and checking online, there it was: a Loewy, his 1958 Le Creuset ‘Coquelle’: a cocotte (a pot) for the coquette. Thankfully, in our postfeminist year of 2015, both I and the husband claim equal rights to the Coquelle in our house. I haven’t yet found a Citroën DS at the flea market for our garage.
I can imagine Loewy sketching out the lines of the vessel and its lid, his pencil expertly lifting off the page at the end of his draft.
Now the cast-iron dish adds space-age flair to our kitchen shelf, and a splash of orange. The patina of slow-cooked oven heat shows its age, but its flame colour is as vibrant as ever. Slowly, it has gained more marks from braising and oven baking, as it has lived with and cooked for us at home.
Hyperventilation moment sequel: last year, on the tube in London, I spotted an advert announcing that Le Creuset had relaunched the Coquelle in a limited edition for John Lewis on the occasion of the store’s 150th anniversary. However skeptical I claim to be about aspirational consumerism, I still felt a twinge of satisfaction on having grabbed a bargain. And an original one to boot.
With my Coquelle, I can fulfil the decree of King Henri IV of France: “I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” And it’s not just a chicken in any pot, it’s a Poulet à la Coquelle.
