Pierrottie to demonstrate historic craft of bousillage

Only one man can say that he built a bousillage chimney for the movie “Belizaire the Cajun,” and that man is folk demonstrator and artist Dale Pierrottie.
“I was asked to rebuild a chimney for a period film, ‘Belizaire the Cajun,’” Pierrottie said. “My grandpa had once built a chimney of bousillage, so I had a basic description of how to build it. Years later, I also researched it on my own to learn about the different kinds of muds and clays in Louisiana.”
Pierrottie first learned about bousillage west of Eunice, and he will soon demonstrate his craft not far from where he first learned it. The craftsman will be a festival participant at the Experience Louisiana Festival Oct. 17-18 at the LSU-Eunice Campus.
“I learned about bousillage from my grandfather on my mom’s side, Mayeus Darbonne, who was from Basile,” Pierrottie said. “They were digging a well and coming up with this gray mud. I took a sack of it home, made some ashtrays and other crude pottery from the clay and baked it in the oven. That was my first experience with bousillage.”
Bousillage — the craft of mixing clay and moss — was first used by Native Americans in Louisiana as a type of mortar in the walls of their primitive homes. The building technique was later used by Cajuns in both large and small dwellings and even in some plantation homes throughout the state.
When doing bousillage demonstrations, Pierrottie explains how to prepare the moss and the framework for building walls out of bousillage.
“Bousillage has been used for more than 200 years,” he said. “It holds heat in the winter and has good evaporative properties good for hot summer months.”
Pierrottie has also expanded his bousillage work from architecture and architectural features to primitive artwork made from the medium, and he looks forward to sharing his work at the festival.
“It’s important to preserve these historical things,” Pierrottie said. “I have fun, and the participants have fun.”