Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Bujoliers Museum, located in Saint-Césaire in Charente-Maritime, is a double museum space, created in 1979 by René Boucher, author in the Saintongese language. It includes the Maison de La Mérine, a faithful reconstruction of a typical rural home of the late 19th century, inspired by a patoisant play written by Athanase Jean, known as Doctor Jean, from the village. This ethnographic museum, which has become a municipal museum, features the daily life of a Saintongese wine village through period objects, traditional furniture and domestic tools.

La Maison de La Mérine, built in 1860 and renovated in 2009, consists of two emblematic rooms: a kitchen equipped with saloirs, hammocks and a Saintongese vasselier, and a bedroom with queen size beds, capes and laces. A portrait of Goulebenéze, a local patoisant barde, was added at its inauguration in April 2009. This museum pays tribute to Saintonge culture, while evoking the work of René Boucher, close to archaeologist Bernard Dubigny, discoverer in 1979 of the remains of 'Pierrette', a Neanderthal woman.

The ground floor of the museum houses a variety of collections: a laundry room with bujours (cooked pot for laundry), a cellar with a Charentais copper alambic, and a geology room illustrating the basement of Saint-Césaire. These spaces, renovated in 2008, reflect the region's artisanal and agricultural traditions, while integrating a scientific dimension linked to local history.

The museum is located in the hamlet of Les Bujoliers, at the border of Saint-Bris-des-Bois, north of Saint-Césaire. Its name and its collections celebrate both the material and immaterial heritage (tools, furniture) (language, patois theatre) of the Saintonge, while being part of a broader museum network, such as the Paleosite de Saint-Césaire, created in 2005 after Bernard Dubigny's major archaeological discovery.

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