Oddlet: Raymond Isidore · 1 min read
Nov 7, 2026
Room for God
By 1962, Raymond Isidore had covered every surface of his house in fifteen tonnes of broken crockery — the beds, the flower pots, the carriage clock, the radio, his wife's sewing machine — and she sighed that she had better be careful, or he would tile her too.
In 1938, Raymond Isidore, a road-mender in Chartres, was walking home across a field when he stopped to pick up a few pieces of broken glass. He liked them, he later said, for their colours and their glitter.
Then he began to tile.
He tiled the interior walls of his small house at 22 rue du Repos, then the floors, then the ceilings. What was a wall and what was an object stopped mattering. He tiled the beds and the flower pots. He tiled the carriage clock, the wheelbarrow, the watering can, the radio. He tiled his wife Adrienne's stove. He tiled her sewing machine. Adrienne, a widow eleven years his senior who had come to him with three children, sighed that she had better be careful or he would tile her too.
By 1962 he had used some fifteen tonnes of broken crockery and declared the work finished. There was nothing left in the house or garden to cover.
Out among the mosaics he had built himself a throne of tiled fragments to sit on. He had built a second throne, in blue.
He left it empty for God.
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- Wikipedia — Maison Picassiette — Basic biographical dates (born 8 Sept 1900, died 7 Sept 1964), employment history (roadmender, cemetery sweeper), 1983 Monument Historique designation; notes psychiatric hospitalization late in life.
- Ville de Chartres — Maison Picassiette de Raymond Isidore (official municipal page) — Official French source: confirms wife Adrienne Rolland née Dousset (married 1924), stepsons Michel and Bernard, land acquired 1929, decoration began 1938, expansion in 1956 with chapel and summer house, city acquisition 1981, MH classification Nov 1983.
- Outsider Environments Europe — Picassiette (making of) — Detailed art-brut context: Adrienne Dousset (1889–1986), work as moulder and tramway employee, Picasso's 1954 visit, Doisneau 1956, Ehrmann's 1962 book.
- Artsy — 'Cemetery Caretaker Raymond Isidore Turned His Cottage into La Maison Picassiette' — English-language biographical overview of Isidore's life and mosaic project.
- Connexion France — 'Discover this amazing mosaic house'
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