This Montrealer Forged Medieval Axes Used to Rebuild Notre-Dame Cathedral
The ax head, heated by the flames of Mathieu Collette’s forge, glows white hot among the coals.
Collette, a blacksmith who uses traditional methods to make tools from iron and steel, takes it out of the fire and kneads it into shape with a series of hammer blows.
Meanwhile, carpenters in France, possibly at this time, use axes he made to chop red oak logs into rafters for Notre-Dame-de-Paris, the world’s most famous cathedral.
The axes had to be as close as possible to the originals used by the carpenters who first built the cathedral in the 12th and 13th centuries so that the new wooden beams would bear the same markings as the old ones.
Collette and the other toolsmiths who went to France to help with the project were in a unique position to make them.
“We’re the only ones left,” Collette said in an interview this week at his Montreal blacksmith shop, located in an old pump house in the Peel Basin.
“We made the axes the same way, using techniques, materials and tools of the time.”
After a fire destroyed part of the roof, walls and spire in 2019, officials in France decided to reproduce the church exactly as it was built some 800 years ago.
It is an undertaking that requires meticulous attention to detail.
To know what types of axes to make, Soumia Luquet, the director of Maison Luquet, a traditional workshop near Munster, France, and her team analyzed the marks left on wooden oak beams salvaged from Notre-Dame . They also looked at ancient engravings showing workmen of the era lifting axes and using tools.
It was a kind of forensic investigation, as they tried to make axes that, in the hands of modern craftsmen, would leave the same marks on the wood as those of the 13th century.
They chose five models of axes – some built for chopping, others for finer, finishing work. But to earn enough for the team of craftsmen, they had to make multiple replicas of each axe, 60 in all.
Since it takes nine to fourteen hours to make one axe, Luquet knew they needed extra manpower.
That’s where Collette comes in, who is considered a master in the toolsmith world.
Toolsmiths “disappeared from history” with industrialization, Luquet said, “and Mathieu is one of the first of this generation to choose that job.”
Collette arrived in France in October 2022 and worked for weeks on little sleep alongside a small group of toolsmiths. Shoulder to shoulder, working in the 50 C heat of the forge, surrounded by fire and the sound of hammers striking iron, they shaped raw iron ore into the axes, which when completed were sent to the carpenters.
“I think we still can’t believe what we did,” said Luquet. “You know in a way that you left a part of yourself in history.”
In a sense, Luquet said, the fire gave them the chance to build a new knowledge base, relearn an art that had been lost to history, and, as one of their team put it, to restore the cathedral, destroyed by a fire, to rebuild. with the fire of their forges.
“This is a project for life,” Collette said. “I am so sorry that the church burned down. It should never have happened. But actually I am very proud.”
Collette sees it as a spiritual endeavor – his role not as a protector of a lost art, but as one of the first of a new generation of toolsmiths. Working on the cathedral, while important, is a way to show the public the role their craft can play in the context of a changing climate and the need to reduce waste.
“It’s important to have sharp toolsmiths today,” he said. “The whole of society has developed around the blacksmith’s abilities.”
On a recent day at his blacksmith shop, known as Forges de Montreal and home to a small museum where Collette teaches his art, he was working on a Biscayne ax head, the type used by fur traders in the 18th century. Collette turns some of these old ax heads, rusted and corroded, into shiny, freshly sharpened tools that can be reused.
When the metal is still hot after hammering it and trimming it to the right shape, he makes his mark and stamps the iron with a powerful blow.
It is essentially the end of a labour-intensive process that is in stark contrast to modern industrial techniques. Collette tools don’t last decades, but centuries or even longer.
“This is the value of a traditional blacksmith to help the community,” Collette said.
“I consider myself happier when I help people.”
Repairs to the fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris have resumed after a hiatus linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
;Resize=(620))
