Yes, I’m back in Le Treport, Normandy, staying with Nadine Piskadlo and Fred Marey right by the sea. They have a house on the front, and down the road about 5 minutes walk is Nadine’s bead shop, Entree En Matiere.
Up through the town, through old arches and narrow streets, one comes to a road that ends again in the sea, but is overlooked by incredibly high white cliffs.
In the old days, there was a funicular (yes,I must check the spelling) rail that led from the street below to the top of the cliffs where there was an hotel etc. It was trashed during the war and is being renovated completely, a HUGE engineering job. This is the only one of it’s kind in the world and wonderful to watch being built. At the bottom on the narrow road, there have been built a row of shops nestled almost against the cliffs, and soon Nadine Fred will have a gallery in one of them, so that tourists pretty well fall in the door when they have ridden down the cliff. On the other side of the street is the only store on that side and it is already a working glass gallery, about two years old. So, they have two, soon to be three shops in this seaside resort. You can imagine how hard they work to keep them filled.
This weekend is the opening of the long awaited bead exhibition at the Museum in Berck sur Mer. This is a maritime museum and on the national list. There are beads by many of the first bead makers because I brought over many from my own personal collection and there are of course beads made by those of you who sent them to France or gave them to Nadine or me to deliver. The theme of those was Sea Wind and Sand and they will be kept as a permanent collection for the museum.
Georges Dilly, the curator has put together a lovely book of the exhibition which will be available through my web store when I have copies. Many bead makers will be gratified to find their work there because I was not able to tell all of them that their beads would be in the show and photographed for the book. This is exciting, it is always great to be in a book!
If any of you are in France and anywhere near Normandy, I hope you can find your way to the opening on June 17 and 18.
I will take pictures and post them here when Fred has shown me how to do it! I haven’t quite mastered putting photographs here.

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