03-5
BOOK
The SLEEPING BAKER
of the LUBERON
It exists in the air all around us.
It's been there for centuries.
The wild yeast of the Luberon could tell us quite a lot about the history of the valley.
It has seen it all.
The Sleeping Baker of the Luberon is a 60-page illustrated book centered around the Boulanger Dormant whose secret ingredient of wild yeast, goes on an adventure collecting bits of the local history while he rests. Mostly functioning as a picture-book, it can be enjoyed by audiences of all languages and ages. Footnotes have been incorporated in both English and French to provide historical anecdotes of interest.
About the Project
Erin Staub and I were invited to participate in the SCAD Alumni Atelier Program for the spring quarter of 2018 in Lacoste. We proposed to use the eight weeks to create a book about the history of the area. In the the process we were able to revisit the magical village where Erin and I had met 13 years prior, while connecting with the students and making new friends along the way.
We knew from the beginning that we wanted to incorporate the legendary bakery that we had heard so much about during our first trip to Lacoste in 2005. It is said that that boulanger baked over grapevine cuttings in an ancient oven kept continually warm for centuries. This idyllic setting was made even more whimsical by a business operated solely on the honor system. After baking all night, he slept all day and simply left his shop unattended with a box of coins for customers to make their own change. He became known as The Sleeping Baker (or The Midnight Baker). We made it part of our mission to find what had become of the mythological man and tell his story as it relates to the overall history of the region.
Upon arrival, we quickly discovered that the bakery and the oven had since been demolished and turned into a vacation home. No one seems to know what became of The Sleeping Baker, whose name is either Jan, Guillaume or William, adding to the mystery of this elusive character. For the sake of this book, we will adopt Jan.
The story is based on Jan’s bakery, the Luberon Valley and the wild yeast that dwells there. Equal attention is given to the area’s history of as to the story’s lore. Therefore, the story incorporates fact while allowing for embellishments. These missteps are all a part of the growing mythology of the Luberon Valley.
The supplemental animation below incorporates some of the illustrations from the book to tell the chronological history of the Petit Luberon Valley over the course of the last 20 million years. It diverges from the book in that it is told from a single wide-shot perspective, perhaps from the view of a single stone positioned to look over the valley, as history unfolds. The animation includes the bakery as part of the history of the ever-changing Luberon Valley.
(Printed by Atelier des Livres, Aix-en-Provence, France 2018)