The very popular Sunday market in Esperaza is a great happening, but for this print a bit of rehashing was required. The building in the centre was “á loué”. So papers were signed and the “Café Du Pont” was relocated and renamed. Some bits and pieces of facades and balconies of other buildings in the village were borrowed. With a bit of effort and obtaining all the relevant permits another fully grown plane tree was planted to make the whole thing “just so”.

Esperaza is a village just north of Quillan in the Haute vallée of the Aude. It had a well known hat making industry, but that is now all but finished, alas.

In the old railway station you will find an excellent dinosaur museum with well presented exhibits of animal life before and during the dinosaur era and also more recent times. A lot of the material was found in the area from the time that those animals roamed there in tropical conditions.

During the nineteen sixties and seventies lots of hippies settled in the area. Now their children, or at least those who adopted a similar lifestyle as their parents, liven up the scene, adding extra colour and a range of products and produce they offer for sale amid the traditional traders who sell bread, cheeses, olives flowers and what have you.

This print is 50 x 50 centimetres. One block of battle ship grey linoleum for detail, one block of cork linoleum for shading and three blocks of poplar ply for adding colour. Printed on 300 grammes Somerset paper.

All images strict copyright © ACWtenBroek