Secret of Degas pastels in a dark Paris shop

By James Mackenzie

PARIS (Reuters Life!) - Tucked away beside a dry cleaners in a dark Paris courtyard, the firm that supplied Impressionist master Edgar Degas with the brilliant pastel colors used in some of his most famous pictures is still in business.

"La Maison du Pastel", a bare, unadorned boutique in the Marais district which appears virtually unchanged since the 1920s, is only open on Thursday afternoons and there is little from the outside to suggest its long tradition.

Until quite recently it was an almost clandestine operation run by three elderly sisters carrying on the work of their grandfather, Henri Roche, who took over the business in 1878. A worn tin plate marked "H.Roche" is still fixed to the door.

"Seven years ago, when I started, there wasn't even a telephone in the shop," said their young relative Isabelle Roche, who learned the secret family techniques and formulas from them before she took over in 2000.

"They worked with a very small group of clients they'd been supplying for 30 years and no one else really knew it was there."

Henri Roche, a chemist who mixed in artistic circles, began developing new methods of making pastels after working with a craftsman whose workshop dated back to the early 18th century.

Pastels, dry crayon-like sticks that create a distinctive cloudy texture on paper, were first used in the 17th century but Roche produced especially intense colors that soon found favor with some of the leading artists of the time.

Degas, one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, was a faithful customer, using Roche pastels in a famous series of ballet dancers. Others included Alfred Sisley, the Symbolist Odilon Redon or the colorful "Fauviste" Raoul Dufy.