The collection, combined with a visit to the La Grange cooperage workshop, is also an opportunity for visitors to see how the cooper’s skills and know-how have been preserved over the centuries. The coopers at this outstanding cooperage, where every stage of the production process is carried out by hand, use the same tools, skills and know-how as their predecessors in the 18th century (plates from the Diderot and d’Alembert Encyclopaedia) and the 19th century (1926 archive film on La Fabrication des tonneaux i.e., barrel-making, INA).

The history of the forests is naturally one of the central themes of the Charlois Fund’s collections. This theme is explored through the display of old maps and original works relating to forestry. The Atlas des bois du Nivernais et du Donziais, published just before the French Revolution and comprising 28 maps carefully executed in pen and watercolour, is an important record of forest management in the Nivernais region in the run up to the French Revolution.

Lastly, among a number of contemporary works of art, the collection of photographs by Viscount Raoul Saulnier d’Anchald, dating from the turn of the 20th century, provides an invaluable historical and sociological record of the know-how and living conditions of forestry workers in the Bertanges forest.