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Ardennes Coticule Regné and Preu info

This is a reply from Rob Celis on 3/26/2020 about the different mining locations used by Ardennes Coticule. I thought this might bring some clarity to some of the information circulating about Regné and Preu.

"The Regné mine closed around 1960-1970 ( i don't know the exact date ) because the owner died. My father bought the mine from that family 20 years ago. We reopened the mining shaft in 2010 but closed it again some years later because the old shaft became dangerous unstable.

That's why you'll see stones mined in Regné on the market.

Before that Thier del Preu was an open mining pit it existed out of +- 25 different small mines. My father bought them all between 1985 and 2010 and transformed it in one big open mining pit ( quarry ).

I have a video that was filmed around 1965 and restored early 2000. It shows the extraction of coticule in the mines of Thier del Preu and the production of stones in the Atelier Burton.

At the end of the video you'll see the old Burton preparing wooden crates full of coticule stones for New York etc...

Also in the last minute you'll see the Atelier Burton from the front. That's our Ardennes-Coticule atelier today, we bought it from the daughter of the old mister Burton long time ago.

Link to video: Coticule 1966_Title_1.mp4 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cKbGdlkzMVxrq8Yo3GH7kFIFRQAXzirZ/view?usp=sharing

'Thier' means in local dialect language something like 'hole in ground for rocks'...
'del Preu' is the name of the mountain.
Hence the name 'Thier del Preu'

Link to google maps: Google Maps - https://www.google.be/maps/@50.2798428,5.8427217,384m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
 

Legion

Staff member
I love those old movies. Where the men were men, and the only PPE they needed was a cloth cap and a cigarette in the mouth.
 

David

B&B’s Champion Corn Shucker
Interesting. So all the stones from the vault actually came from Regne and not Preu?
 
@David the two Les Lats we traded back/forth were from Preu, not Regne - you could probably tell that when using them though. They weren't listed in the vault, had it still been a 'thing' they would probably have been listed there. Both examples were in the same sort of 'sequestered away' class.
 

David

B&B’s Champion Corn Shucker
The more I think about this the less it adds up. It’s pretty much the opposite of what I’ve seen and read over the past decade. Here’s a quote from Bart back from 2010 talking about the different mines.

“As much as I regret it, I can't offer any information about that Coticule. Vintage Coticules can come from any former mine. There are 3 main Coticule deposits: The Ottré-Regne" deposit (Ardennes owns a mine at Ragné, but currently does no extraction over there), the Salmchateau-Ol'Preu deposit (Ardennes currently quarries at Ol'Preu), and the Sart deposit. Thee deposits are several km long. There were many mines in the past, all tapping into one of these 3 deposits. I only have information about the morphology of the stones that come from Ol'Preu location. Possibly, that information is more or less valid for that entire deposit, although some old source suggest that their was variation alongside one deposit. Anyway: without being able to even tell a mining location, I can't possible make any layer determination, even if I know what to look for in currently not mined layers like L'Allemande, Les Dados, Les Petas, La Rouge, etc...”

And an excerpt from Henk Bos grinding and honing that was published in December of 2013 talking about the new mining location at Regne.


“We would love to know what stones will come from the mine at Regné. There is something known about what layers are present in the mine. For example: La Grise Gros and Double Fin, Le Peta Gros and Fin Double, L'Allemande, Gres, La Pareu, La Dressante, La Dados and Le Petit Tenne. The later in particular seems to have an especially good quality. "La Lorraine" is sandwiched between the Coticule layer named "Les Petas" and the Coticule layer called "L'Allemande".
Reaching the layers is difficult. First a vertical shaft should be realized from which more or less horizontal corridors (galleries) will be made following the layers.
Bart Thorfs has tested some of the rare samples (La Grise, Vault n° 37 -, La Dressante and Vault n° 2). They seemed strikingly similar to their respective cousins of the Ol'Preu quarry”.
 

David

B&B’s Champion Corn Shucker
@David the two Les Lats we traded back/forth were from Preu, not Regne - you could probably tell that when using them though. They weren't listed in the vault, had it still been a 'thing' they would probably have been listed there. Both examples were in the same sort of 'sequestered away' class.
No doubt. Those are both special stones, especially that big bout. Why did I sell that back to you again??😎
 
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