Hello Greg,
You will be able to sleep easily tonight in the knowledge that your money will have been very well spent on the Bernard Carre frame you just bought off Sceno in Paris.
As the seller Sceno - Jaouen has just told us in his email the frame is an authemtic Carre...and has the curved plate top-eyes stamped B Carre to prove it
The frame is rare as it is an early Carre, probably dating from the mid 50s to early 60s, at a time when he used round fork blades in that unusual two-plate fork crown, and those odd Huret drop-outs. . Typical also of Carre is the fact that the seat lug, probably a Nervex or Oscar Egg does not match with the Prugnat head lugs. The other unusual feature is the style in which Carre has finished off the ends of the fork blades and the seat and chainstays. Normally he scollops them out with a round file, but the case of this frame he has left the ends domed on the outside and cut square on the inside.
As you state in your email to the List, Carre worked very extensively as a sub-contractor and supplier to the trade and quite a lot of trade/Pro teams. What you need to do now is to discover which trade teams of the period in question rode Huret gears - certainly Stella did. The other possibility is that the Huret ends were the only ones on Carre's bench top at the time, as he seeems to have a reputation for using whatever was readily available to hand. Some of my Carre frames have odd mixes of fork ends and lugs. Carre was very fond of Pillar Box red paint.. so this frame could well be wearing its original paintwork...or it could have been a frame built for the Sauvage -Lejeune team, whose headquarters were about 10 kms up the road from Jaouen's home. Had the frame been built for a specific team member the rider's initials would have been stamped on the top-eyes.
I had got my eye on the frame and there wasn't a bid on it when I went to bed in the early hours of this morning and had hoped it would remain unsold until I got up. If all goes well in the next two days I shall be going back to France and intend calling on Jaouen , en route, to see what gems he has lurking about in his cellar. I had hoped to take the Carre off his hands..
Of course you could change your mind about the frame if you remain unconvinced about it. The chainset's extraction threads are in a bad way so you might have real difficulties removing the cranks without damaging the frame. As Jaouen states in his email to the List...he is willing to cancel the auction...
Come on Greg..if you feel like a damsel in distress about this frame.. then I will be your knight in shining armour..and get you out of the mess.
I have onlly seen one other Carre like this one and the last time I saw it, it was hanging on a peg in a workshop about 30 minutes away from Jaouen's house..so it looks as though I shall have to make a deviation to see whether it is still available.
Come on Greg, you know that you already have too many frames in your stable !!
Norris Lockley
Settle UK