France 2024 - Day 64 – Nontron

Last night I was very glad to come home, to a cold Giulia beer (you are a master brewer, my dear), and ready to turn into a couch potato. But then I started to look at a map of Périgord Vert, and I discovered a town called Nontron. Now, to a geologist that sounds a lot like the name of the mineral nontronite, so I felt it was my professional duty to go investigate. I could take the 9h00 bus to Périgueux and connect with the 10h00 bus to Nontron, to arrive at 11h00. I would have to take the 16h45 bus back, so that would give me almost six hours to explore. On the way there we drove through the village of Brantóme, which looked very charming indeed, so I will have to come back this way sometime later. As we approached Nontron I saw a network of very steep ravines, with the city scattered over canyons and ridges. There are some nice views in Nontron, but the city is not as charming as I would have liked and six hours were going to be too much.

I was right. This is one of the two locations in the world where nontronite is found. This mineral is a green iron-rich clay of the smectite group (i.e., an iron-rich montmorillonite) that for the last 2,000 years has been processed as an iron ore (seems that, upon weathering, hematite forms at the surface of the clay, eventually leading to formation of iron-rich laterites). The Romans were the first to establish a town here, and it seems that in the Middle Ages it grew in importance. Sometime in the XV century the artisans of the city started processing the iron in earnest, and created the tradition of Nontron knives, which to this date are considered some of the best in Europe (and they claim to be the oldest center of knife manufacturing in Europe). So the highlight of my trip was to visit the retail shop of the one independent knife artisan, the retail shop of the artisans’ cooperative, and the workshop of the cooperative. They do everything here, from the smelting and shaping of the blades (now they use three types of steels processed elsewhere), to milling and polishing the distinctive wood handles, to assembling the different pieces into one of the simplest and most elegant types of knives. I drooled over some of them, but the price was prohibitive. They were absolutely beautiful, but what am I going to do with a single blade knife … hmm … it could be my cheese knife.