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Superb traditional santon of Wallonia realized by Robert Noirhomme representing a boteresse (porter).

The production of a santon passes by many stages. Firstly, a clay ball is "squached” between the two parts of the mould and thus takes the shape of the character.
The ground character leaves thus fringed with a ground crown which it is necessary to remove with a small tool when the ground is still wet. Then, the edges too sharp are blurred with the special brush and the base is sandpapered.
In a furnace, santons will become terra cotta by a rise programmed on 3 levels to bring them to 1030° in approximately seven hours.
The final key is also the longest work: painting. Obviously this is also carried out hand-crafted because no machine can obtain a qualitative result. To make things easier, santons are painted with acrylic colors: watercolours which have the characteristic to hold with a washing necessary from time to time to revive the colors and to vacuum-clean.

The boteress from Liège (or Li boterèsse a hèra in Walloon) is all in all, the ancestor of the truck. The botteresse rented her services every morning, to the highest offerer: to discharge a barge, to lead potatoes to the farm or coal to the mine. It is said that the botteresses are the ones who built the hillock of the lion in Waterloo (Belgium).
She holds with the hand the surmounted stick of a plate which it drove under its hood to relieve its back when it stopped, for example, to satisfy a pressing need, thus releasing the two hands quite necessary to draw aside the heavy dress of tiretaine. The “hèra” is the bottomless basket which enabled her to increase the capacity of its hood.

The santon has a 7.5 cm height and is made out of clay.

Source: Robert Noirhomme, Belgian craftman.