Museum of the Ancient Sparta
This place offers you to discover an old craft through preserved tools and several fabrications, it also brings a historical light on the heritage (neolithic, antiquity...).
Museum of the Ancient Sparta
Founded in 1839, La Sparterie de la Maison Lemaire has developed an industry whose technical know-how has been recognized worldwide among textile manufacturers for 135 years. Installed on the site of the factory in 1994, the Museum of Ancient Sparta offers to discover this old profession through preserved tools and several exotic and even unexpected fabrications, braided works in sisal or coco. The site also offers historical lighting of the heritage of Dammartin-en-Serve (Neolithic occupations, Gallo-Roman habitation, etc.).
Sparterie de la Maison Lemaire
The Sparterie factory, installed by Nicolas Lemaire in his native town in 1839, is an original Ile-de-France industrial site where sisal and coconut fibers were woven from the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century until the first oil shock of the 1970s: various rugs, hammocks, ropes, gymnastic equipment, school bags, shoes, bridles and halters, charcoal bags, grain silos, etc.
The activity developed in the canton of Houdan makes it possible to support more than a hundred employees from 1865, divided between the reception of raw materials from India, the preparation of coils and cans, weaving on mechanized craft (classic and Jacquard), the tint, the drying, the finishes, the shipment of the products to the Parisian store of the Maison Lemaire or its various customers.
The technical know-how and the quality of the products quickly establishes the world renown of the company which collects great prizes and gold medals of the international and universal exhibitions (Nice in 1874, Antwerp in 1885, San Francisco in 1894, Paris in 1900, Hanoi in 1902, etc.).
The arrival of plastics and international competition led Maison Lemaire to close permanently in 1974, due to insufficient profitability and an industrial heritage that had become obsolete.