Urban
sculptures

Urban
sculptures

Town Decorations & Carmentrans         

City decorations

We create custom-made sculptures for street lamps or decorative structures, ephemeral or permanent, adapted to the urban furnitures.
Our decorative elements comply with the specifications required for outdoor and urban installations.
The elaboration of a project as well as the installation of the decorations is made in collaboration with the technical services of the city.
The study of such a project can not be done without location spotting.

The Caramentrans

As our name indicates, we have become, years after years, true specialists in the manufacture and cremation of Caramentrans.
Most of the time, we use our giant puppets in the staging of the burning.

The Caramentran, a Provencal tradition

In the past, Caramentran designated the three fat days (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) that preceded Ash Wednesday, which marks the entry into Lent. These fat days were there to exorcise the food poverty (the moment when winter provisions were exhausted) and to prepare for the agony of the bad season.
Then, Caramentran was applied to its symbolic representation that is the mannequin personifying the Carnival that walks around everywhere in the streets on Ash Wednesday, the mannequin that we burn on the public square in the effigy of the characters condemned by the popular vindication.
The caramentran, a scapegoat, is in fact Winter being judged.
He is accused of all evil things: epidemic, bad harvests, frost, drought…
These are customs anchored in the agricultural society, the ancestral peasantry, which awaits the spring with the next harvests. Today, Caramentran carries all the sins of the community and all the misfortunes of the past years which are blamed on him. So the colorful mannequin that was made during the carnival period burnt on the squareto close the parade, the crowd in disguise puts him on trial. He is judged by a popular court composed of the inhabitants and representatives of all the trades.
Ash Wednesday is the day that closes the carnival period. In the Catholic religion, it represents the first day of Lent when fat, eggs, meat, delicacies must be removed from the diet. To the end the carnival in beauty, we celebrate one last time, traditionally on Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras.
This is the beginning of a period of fasting and deprivation of forty days before Easter. That’s why for the Carnival, or Caramentran, one is allowed to be crazy and to eat well, just to give oneself courage.
If Wednesday is lean, the collective meal on Tuesday is fat, hence “Mardi Gras”. This day is also a day of collection that is also called the quest for eggs, which is called in Provence, the acampado dis iou. One eats doughnuts and pancakes, to use the “fatty” food (like butter) which comes from the need to exhaust all the provisions of eggs and fat which could not be preserved during the 40 days of Lent.