the Picardie of Duralex, the glass of canteens, of David Bowie and James Bond

For more than 70 years, it has been on canteen tables and in kitchen cupboards around the world. Picardie, Duralex’s iconic glass, takes its name from the region where the brand’s creators are based. It’s the story of Sunday.

It’s been the canteen drink for decades. A glass of shellfish on Tuesday and breaded fish on Friday. The one whose bottom we looked at as soon as we sat at the table, asking our neighbor for a plate “how old are you?“And whose number designated the one who went to get a pitcher of water or some bread because”today, it’s the oldest who goes. Valérie, we promise you that tomorrow, it will be the youngest…“

Picardie is the glass filled to the brim with childhood memories. Like the Gigogne, eight years older, it is the cult model of Duralex. Chosen for watering schoolchildren because its shape makes it easier to hold and it is particularly resistant. Its instantly recognizable design was invented in 1954. It was born in the Loiret, in La-Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, near Orléans. On machines that have barely changed in 70 years.

Nine million Picardy cheeses come off the factory lines every year. The furnaces produce molten glass 24 hours a day. That day, the Saphir model was in production. Tinted in the mass with cobalt oxide, the glass goes from incandescent red to midnight blue in a few seconds.

Ahmed Terristi is a team leader in the mold workshop at the Duralex factory. In the more than thirty years he has been working at La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, he has seen astronomical quantities of the famous nine-faced goblet pass through the production lines. A particular design that the Picardy owes to its mould. “It is a ball of glass at 1,600°C which falls into the mold and which is then pressed with a punch to give the shape of the glass, explains Ahmed. The mold is then closed with another piece which will just make the edge of the glass.“

“A maximum of 136 shots per minute can be shot. That means we make 136 glasses per minute. We do this on machine 13. It’s the fastest production“, indicates Marceau Hache, mechanic at the packaging workshop.

Just like the brand’s other models, the Picardie is renowned for being very durable. And even four to five times more resistant than normal glass. And this is because the glass is tempered. The quenching technique was invented in the 1930s by the Saint-Gobain company. It was intended for car windshields and headlights. Once its shape is given, the glass is heated until it is close to its softening point. It is then suddenly subjected to rapid cooling. A technique that has made Duralex famous and the prestige of the company.

But how is it that this glass made in Orléans is called Picardie? To find out, you have to go to Loir-et-Cher, where the national archives of the Saint-Gobain group are located: 360 years of history, carefully preserved on nine floors! This is where all the advertisements which accompanied the launch of Picardie in the 1950s are stored.

Because it indeed owes its name to the region where its creators established their first glass manufacturing workshop in 1692: the royal mirror and mirror factory. “It refers to the region which is the cradle of the Saint-Gobain group since it takes its name from the town of Saint-Gobain in Aisne where the factory was established at the end of the 17th century.^e century, says Anne Alonzo, director of the Saint-Gobain archives. Saint-Gobain created the Duralex brand in 1945 and launched the Picardie model in 1954 as one of its flagship models.“

Duralex was not always called that. The initial company was created in 1927 in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin by a vinegar maker who wanted to make his own jars and carboys. In 1934, Saint-Gobain, which had invented tempered glass shortly before, bought the Société des verreries de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin to produce glass parts for automobiles. But another outlet then offers itself: dishwashing. In 1945, the name Duralex (which comes from the Latin expression “Dura lex sed lex“, the law is harsh but it is the law) is filed: the La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin factory is therefore exclusively intended for the production of tempered glass cups. The first to come off the production lines the following year, the Gigogne, was an immediate success in France and in nearly 120 countries.

Rebelote eight years later with Picardie. To the point that Saint-Gobain will quickly patent it worldwide to avoid any counterfeiting.

From a simple housewife glass, Picardie has become over the years a timeless object. And a true design icon. To see it, head to Le French Design, a Parisian exhibition gallery. We find there the designer Jean-Sébastien Blanc. In 2015, his agency was chosen to celebrate Duralex’s 70th anniversary. With the mission of diverting Picardy into seventy everyday objects: hourglass, painter’s palette, bird feeder, piggy bank, pencil sharpener…

Reinterpretations which owe a lot to the simplicity of the Picardie line. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to do as well as this glass, admits Jean-Sébastien Blanc. It’s like redesigning a knife or a fork: you can always add flourishes around it and try to give the impression of doing something new but it will still be a knife or a fork. And Picardie is the very essence of glass. It’s very complicated to make things fairer. It’s the perfect example of what we seek to do in design: we dream of designing objects that are like that, also known throughout the world.“

So well known that Picardy has become a pop culture phenomenon. In July 1973, the American photographer Joe Stevens immortalized it in the hands of David Bowie who recorded the famous album Pin Ups at the Château d’Hérouville in Val-d’Oise.

And if Picardy already appears in numerous post-war French films, its success will take it to Hollywood. It caught fire in 2002 for a toast given by Daniel D. Lewis in Gangs of New York by Martin Scorsese. In 2008, Daniel Craig aka James Bond brought it to his lips to drink a whiskey in Quantum of Solace. Four years later, Picardie would even go so far as to save the life of the most famous spy in Heavy rain :

An image success which hides the difficult last decades of the brand, worthy of a film with twists and turns. Because the end of the 70s marked the beginning of the decline for Duralex. Saint-Gobain sold the company in 1997 to an Italian glassmaker. The company then employs a thousand employees.

A dark period for the brand then begins. Bankruptcy filings, cessation of payments and judicial liquidations follow one another at the same pace as the shareholders. Duralex is nothing more than a shadow of what it once was. Until, at the end of yet another judicial recovery, the SCOP takeover offer presented by the 228 employees was accepted by the commercial court. It was last July 26. The new general manager of the site, François Marciano then launched an appeal: “I invite all French people to buy Duralex to support us and ensure that our factory survives in these complicated times when the economy is under attack.“, he asks in the press. The next day, the whole of France flocked to the brand’s website. Purchases then increase by more than 323%. Duralex is overwhelmed by orders.

But getting back on track completely will still take a long time: the first profits of the company, which has officially belonged to its employees since 1^is August 2024, are expected in three years. And Picardy is obviously part of the new commercial strategy. To conquer new markets, you have to make it more modern, more chic and more fun too. This involves color: chromium for green, selenium for pink, or manganese for purple. And by new dimensions.

“Each country has its own consumption habits. The Americans are going to be more interested in large capacities like 31 cl. In France, we are more on 25 cl, shows us Nicolas Rouffet, the industrial director of Duralex. We sell a lot in the Near and Middle East the 16 cl which is used to drink water but also tea. We are working on increasing the capacity of the Picardie to go from 50 to 58.5 cl quite simply for the pint of beer: currently, in the 50, you put your 50 cl of beer and there is no longer any room for the foam. And a beer without foam is not a beer!“

For its 80th anniversary next year, Duralex wants to design a new glass model. This hasn’t happened since 1997. Will it manage to eclipse Picardy? “It’s going to be really complicated to dethrone Picardy because it remains the world icon. It is at MoMA in the United States. It’s in all the design magazines. It’s still THE iconic glass. Dethroning Picardy will be very, very hard, if not impossible“, admits François Marciano.

What a destiny for this little glass tumbler which has become a design icon and which owes its name to a village in Aisne. And no one knows who invented it in 1954. An anonymous stroke of genius thanks to which the word Picardy has traveled all over the world for more than 70 years.

By the way, do you know where the number at the bottom of the glass comes from? It is that of one of the fifty machines on which the Picardie series are produced. This number facilitates quality control: if a glass has a defect, those from the same series are easily identifiable as well as the machine responsible.

But for millions of schoolchildren, this number remains and will remain the age of the one who will have to get up to get a helping of fries because “today, it’s the youngest who goes. Yes, well, we can’t do anything about it if it’s still you, Valérie…“