A border that is none
The Basque Country sits on both slopes of the western Pyrenees, three provinces on the French side, four on the Spanish, without ever really caring about the line drawn between them. People speak there a language like no other in Europe, euskara, whose origin no one knows. Here is a people that was there before everyone else.
This antiquity and this singularity forged a stubborn identity, read even in everyday objects. The lauburu, that cross with four curved heads, is found carved on the lintels of houses, on furniture, on disc-shaped gravestones. A sign everywhere, like a signature.
In dress, no loaded costume or teeming embroidery. The Basque goes to the essential: white, red, a few strong pieces recognisable among a thousand. A sobriety that, today, rings surprisingly true.
The beret, more than a hat
The beret has become, in the world's imagination, THE French headgear. It is a pretty misunderstanding. The disc of fulled wool called txapela here is Basque and Béarnais, and the famous mass-made “Basque beret” was long made at Oloron, in Béarn, not in the Basque Country itself. The legend arranges itself as best it can.
Still, among the Basques the beret is not an accessory, it is a symbol. So much so that champions are crowned with a huge txapela: the winner of a pelota tournament or of a bertsulari contest, those poets who improvise in verse, becomes a txapeldun, literally “the one who has the beret”.
Worn every day, tilted to the side, it keeps you warm, cuts the wind and never dates. A garment of total simplicity, loaded with a meaning everyone understands on the spot.
The espadrille of Mauléon
The other Basque emblem is worn on the feet: the espadrille. A sole of braided plant fibre, hemp or jute, and a canvas upper laced at the ankle. Cool, light, made of almost nothing, it shod the peasant, the dancer and the pelota player.
Its capital is Mauléon, in Soule, the easternmost province. In the nineteenth century, millions of pairs were made there, and women from the Spanish Basque Country, the “swallows”, crossed the border each winter to come and sew them. A whole economy rested on this rope shoe.
Nothing plastic in it, nothing synthetic: fibre, canvas, a seam. The espadrille says in its way what we try to do, a simple, honest thing, in good material, that crossed the fashions without denying itself.
The lauburu, wheel of the sun
Let us come back to the lauburu, for it deserves a pause. Four commas turning around a centre, like a wheel set spinning. People have seen in it a solar symbol, a sign of life, an image of perpetual motion. It is very old, and the Basques appropriated it to the point of making it a national emblem.
It is cut into the stone of the discoidal steles, those round tombs planted like suns in Basque cemeteries. It is carved on chests, doors, tool handles. Always the same wheel, turning now one way, now the other.
It is an ornament that does without colour and rare material. A simple line, repeated, loaded with meaning. Proof that a strong motif needn't be complicated to leave a mark, from Scottish tartan to this Basque wheel.
The makila, staff of honour
If one object were to sum up the Basque relation to craft, it would be the makila. In appearance, a simple walking stick of medlar wood. In truth, a weapon, a staff of honour and a piece of goldsmithing, all at once.
The decoration of the wood is carved on the living tree, years before it is cut, so the notches heal in relief. The handle hides a steel point, the pommel is of silver or horn, and often a motto in Basque is inscribed on it. It was given to honoured guests, to respected elders, as a sign of esteem.
An object that demands patience, know-how and long time, and is kept a whole life before being passed on. One could not better sum up the spirit of this notebook.
A two-colour sobriety
The Basque festive costume, that of the dancers and the Saint John's races, holds in two colours: white and red. White shirt and trousers, beret, red belt and neckerchief, espadrilles on the feet. Nothing more, and it is already a bearing.
People say the seven stripes of the famous Basque linen represent the seven provinces. It is a pretty story, but recent and commercial: originally, these stripes on the ox blankets served above all to tell one owner's cattle from another's. The brand invented the symbol after the fact.
It hardly matters, in the end. What remains is that taste for the little and the strong. Two colours, a few well-made objects, an identity worn without piling it on. An elegance of red and white, frank as a handshake.
