The canary reader

The reader with canaries, on the Coiffard bookshop

The Nantes audio-guided tour has you look up at the fine wooden bookshop that unfolds on either side of Rue de la Fosse. Above the shopfront, a life-size sculpture, seated on the balcony, has won over the public: the reader with canaries, a work by Stéphane Phélippot.

A work of strong symbolic charge

This sculpture is heavy with meaning and invites contemplation. In it can be read the emancipation of the free man, delivered from the slave trade whose chains he still holds in his hands, and the elevation of the soul through knowledge and reading. Set on the balcony of the Coiffard bookshop for the shop's centenary, the work recalls with gravity the slave-trading past of Nantes while celebrating freedom and learning.

What there is to see

At number 4 Rue de la Fosse, look up above the shopfront to discover the silhouette of the reader, peacefully settled on his balcony. Below, the Coiffard bookshop, founded in 1919, is one of the oldest in the city: it has kept all its authenticity, with its fine wooden bookcases and its old ladders. A stop for lovers of books and of the hushed atmosphere of great bookshops.

Practical information

The reader with canaries can be discovered at number 4 Rue de la Fosse, in the heart of Nantes, on the balcony of the Coiffard bookshop. The sculpture can be contemplated freely from the street, at all hours. The bookshop itself welcomes the public according to its own opening hours.

What does the reader with canaries symbolise?

It symbolises the emancipation of the man freed from the slave trade and the elevation of the soul through knowledge and reading.

Where is this sculpture?

On the balcony of the Coiffard bookshop, at number 4 Rue de la Fosse, in Nantes; the work is by Stéphane Phélippot.