The gogottes of Fontainebleau
The association of Olivier Fournier Laroque and Raphaël Ducoin-Nézan, crystallized by the creation of Merveille.com, was born from the meeting of a collector of rare objects and a gallery owner. These two enthusiasts are aimed at all those looking for unique pieces, carefully selected and offering precious objects of natural history, mineralogy and gemology. Particularly specialists in Fontainebleau gogottes, they are now revealing some secrets to us ...
The Fontainebleau gogottes are fabulous and very rare pieces. It was quite recently that they were so baptized by a geologist who read the albums of the Adventures of Zéphyr. Gogotte was the name of one of the characters. These geological curiosities have been collected for at least three or four centuries. The Bosquet des Trois Fontaines in Versailles is essentially made up of them.
They are made up of an agglomeration of grains of sand called silica cementitious sandstone. It is a very fine white sand which, once in contact with water, forms beads. This sand is only found in the Fontainebleau region. Several geologists have tried to date the gogottes and indicate completely different dates from one geologist to another, ranging from 300,000 to 3 million years ago.
It was sometimes possible to find them in the quarries of the Paris region, they were crushed and thus remain almost impossible to find today. The rarity of the object and the white of the sand contribute to the “work of art” dimension of this entirely natural piece. Many artists have also been inspired by it. With an indisputable aestheticism, the gogottes are collected by enthusiasts as well as collectors of contemporary art and curiosities. The cabinet of curiosity aspect and at the same time a contemporary work attract many curious people ...
