Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Hands down


Last night I was coming home as usual, but I had no idea of what my photo du jour was going to be... Then, I walked into a little passage called Le Passage Molière in the 3rd arrondissement. There, on the left hand side, I came across the cutest shop on earth called Des Pieds et des Mains ("feet and hands"), which has a double entendre name - "to make a lot of effort". Anyway, this shop specializes in plaster or bronze casts for hands and feet , whether they belong to famous people, grown-ups, or babies. A wonderful idea. FYI, it costs 150€ for a child's hand or foot, 250€ for a grown-up's hand,and 300€ for a foot. (I can see the jokes starting already!)

28 comments:

  1. In English we have the expression "an arm and a leg" meaning something that it too expensive. So a cast of a hand or foot will cost me an arm or a leg? Oh dear! Too dear for me!

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  2. Oh dear—GF Wren has said exactly what I was going to say! So I'll just say that this photo is perfectly charming. I have a plaster cast of my daughter Lila's 6-year-old thumb; the dentist made it for her when he was making an impression of her teeth.

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  3. Jokes about plaster casts of adult body parts? Moi? Never.

    I take a simple photocopy of my daughter's hand every year and tape them up in my office. It's very cool seeing how her hand has grown and developed over the years. Fingers that were once short and pudgy have become long and graceful. Cost = 0€.

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  4. Alexa!!! Way back in the 60's I bought the material used by dentists and put it on my face. I have the impressions of my face from 6years of my life, then stopped. As you can see from the photo, every wrinkle and pore will show up.

    When I was teaching, I put makeup on one of my plaster of paris faces, a wig, and dressed up a body with stuffed newspapers in my clothes. Made a cardboard coffin and voila! Halloween in my classroom. OK, I was the art teacher and could get away with it. And I DO still have a picture of the event!
    What I could do with Sebastien's hand this Halloween.......btw, the cost would be about 3 dollars to make something , but the shop has to make a living, I guess.

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  5. I think the photo is charming. I wonder if this will catch on? Eric, you'll have to go by again sometime and let us know if there's something else entirely in the window.

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  6. Ooooh!! I took many photos of this shop window when I stumbled across it just off the rue Quincampoix. It was so charming and so unusual. I'm glad you got to see it, Eric! Now (though its just an illusion) I feel like a real Parisienne. : )

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  7. Do they charge extra depending on which finger goes up? ;)

    Seriously, the window looks a little creepy :)

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  8. So, how is this phrase, des pied et des mains, used in a sentence?

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  9. OH I can't even go there Eric!! Whoo hooo! ONLY hands and feet in Paris? Yeah right. What was on display in the back room? I"m guessing the price goes up???
    V

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  10. The price can be stiff to begin with and it keeps going up. Yes, Virginia, we had to take the hint from M. PDP. Suzy passed on it with grace. Grace passed on me, but she was plastered. Or pissed, to a Brit. Or hosed. Horses R's? (Oops, that was yesterday.)

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  11. I guess they wouldn't put that in the window, then?

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  12. Carrie, you would say : faire des pieds et des mains pour .....
    Ex : j'ai du faire des pieds et des mains pour avoir des places (ou des tickets).

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  13. Adorable.
    Les mains : formidables et irremplaçables "outils" dont la Nature nous a dotés.
    Elles me fascinent. La médecine est encore incapable de parvenir à cette perfection. Et que dire des mains des artistes?
    Quelle émotion quand deux mains se rencontrent... celle d'un bébé et d'un père ou d'une mère, oui, bien sûr. Prendre une main dans sa main.

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  14. Adorable.
    Les mains : formidables et irremplaçables "outils" dont la Nature nous a dotés.
    Elles me fascinent. La médecine est encore incapable de parvenir à cette perfection. Et que dire des mains des artistes?
    Quelle émotion quand deux mains se rencontrent... celle d'un bébé et d'un père ou d'une mère, oui, bien sûr. Prendre une main dans sa main.

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  15. Ha ha:) 150 euros for an arm and 300 for the foot! OH man.. that is a lot of DOUGH for a mould!

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  16. Wren- that was THE joke!

    However, I heard a little story about this particular shop:

    A man walks in to the shop and the shopkeeper asks if he can help.

    "Well, it's rather delicate, but I would like to know how much it would cost to have a plaster cast made of my private parts"

    The shopkeeper lowers his voice, "This can be arranged monsieur. However as we charge according to size, , there would have to be a measurement taken of the body part in question."

    The man thinks for a moment and replies, "Oh..all right then"

    The shopkeeper rings the bell on the counter and an extremely attractive young lady emerges from the back room.

    "If you would go into the back room monsieur, my assitant, Mademoiselle Fifi, will take the necessary measurements"

    The man follows her into the back room and returns a few minutes later.

    After consulting with her, the shopkeeper says, "The price will be 400 euros monsieur"

    The man replies, "Do you think I'm a fool? My twin brother came here last Tuesday and was quoted 200 euros"

    "Ah yes monsieur, but Tuesday is Fifi's day off."

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  17. OOOOOOOOOhhhh Drummond!
    That's an excellent one!!
    And that's very charming for Fifi!!!!!!! :)))

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  18. I applaud that joke. A hand for Fifi!

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  19. I've got to hand it to you Eric, you always put your best foot forward to bring us the sights of Paris, don't you! Now if I could just put my finger on it, I'd know how you stumbled onto these little gems of shops.

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  20. Drummond, LOOOL !
    So Fifi's not in today... sigh ;-(

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  21. Jeff,
    You're a mess as we say down here in lil ole Alabama. Drummond, I'm laughing out loud. Lord, no matter what Eric comes up with , it always ends up like this. I have to limit my visits, because the group dynamics here get me in trouble every time. Peer Pressure on the PDP! Whooooeeeee!
    V

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  22. Le passage moliere is a very nice place. I use to spend a lot of time at "la maison de la poésie" ...

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