15.48.a - Five Hours, Forty Minutes: The French Company That Bounced Back (again)

In this PAID le Bulletin I write about what every French kid knew. The Glasses from the school canteen ( la cantine) & the numbers game. Turns out they weren't ready to let them disappear...

Duralex Picardie glasses

Today at a Glance: Your PAID weekly newsletter

Bonjour, my dear friends, both new and long-time ones...

I’m thrilled to have you here with me for the first time and regulars, again this week—bienvenue—welcome to our little corner of France!

Un grand merci (a big thank you) for being part of this wonderful global family of Francophiles. Your support enables me to continue growing and improving MyFrenchLife™ Magazine and le Bulletin newsletter.

Here’s what you’ll find today:

1. My feature this week is quite a story! “15.48.a - Five Hours, Forty Minutes: The French Company That Bounced Back (again)”

2. This week’s ‘What’s happening in MyFrenchLife™ Magazine’ - new contributors and articles

3. You can also find the free newsletter ‘‘15.48 -Three fresh reads from France (and one citizenship interview spectacularly botched)“→here.

Warm regards
Judy - 29.11.2025

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1. Five Hours, Forty Minutes

Here’s a story I stumbled across this week. I’d been thinking about the heritage aspect of Duralex as an article but hadn’t yet started writing it, and then there it was, and with a fresh angle…

It’s all about glass that bounces. Turns out the company bounces, too.

You’ve probably drunk from a Duralex tumbler. At someone’s place in Melbourne, or a café in the Marais, definitely at your French grandmother’s kitchen table in rural France. If you’ve spent any time in France, you know these glasses. Les verres de la cantine - the school canteen ones with that mysterious number stamped on the bottom.

Remember the childhood game? Your number versus mine. Playground currency in glass form. I was always a 7. Made me feel lucky.

The glassworks sits at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, right on the Loire just outside Orléans. Been making these things since 1945. The iconic Picardie model - a chunky tumbler, curved rim, semi-fluted - it now sits in design museums as well as cafes. Patrick Taylor, the design critic, puts it alongside Levi’s and Swiss Army knives. Those objects that feel discovered rather than designed. Like they’d always existed, just waiting for us to notice.

Here’s where it gets personal. François Marciano runs Duralex now. His grandfather, Angelo, was a glassblower, co-founder of the verreries-cristalleries d’Arques up north. His father worked in that same factory. Three generations making glass in France, tu vois (you see)?

The Tempering Process - Glass is heated to 700°C / 1292°F and then cooled very suddenly using cold air.

So when Marciano discovered that the parent company at that time had loaded Duralex with €40 million in debt to save their own operations - all perfectly legal, by the way, well, he was furious. He took it straight to Bercy, the French finance ministry. They dismissed him. They claimed he was wrong.

In November 2022, the furnace went cold.

Think about that for a second. The oven that literally cannot cool, that has to stay at 1,440°C or the glass solidifies and you’re finished, actually went dark. Energy bills had gone from €3 million to €12 million. Electricity prices were 22 times higher. Gas 18 times. Five months. Cinq mois. Workers come in every day to a silent factory.

Here’s what happened next…

Eighteen months ago, 180 of the 243 workers bought the company. It became a coopérative, a SCOP (a workers’ cooperative). The minimum investment was €500 each. Not someone else’s money. Theirs. The fourth receivership in 20 years, but this time they owned it!

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