Le Coffret d'Auzon

Le Coffret d'Auzon: when a millennial artifact inspired a festival

The Le Coffret d'Auzon Festival was born in 2025 from a bold cultural initiative: to bring the Auzon Casket, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon artifact with fascinating origins, back to life through music and art. This exceptional object, carved from whalebone on the shores of the North Sea, traveled to Brioude before being found in Auzon in the 19th century. Today shared between the British Museum in London and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, the casket fascinates with its multicultural character, its panels depicting Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Germanic scenes.

The AuzonToujours association, driven by the desire to promote hospitality and participate in the cultural and tourist dynamism of its territory, created this festival to symbolically bring the casket back to its adopted city and give it a voice within the setting of the Collégiale Saint-Laurent.

A musical program between past and present

For its 2025 edition, the festival offered three evenings of concerts in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent, each exploring a part of the casket's history:

• The 8th century — the era of the casket's creation: Benjamin Bagby, a world authority on Early Medieval music, performed texts and travel songs from the end of the first millennium (Beowulf, The Wanderer, L'Enfant de neige), in a duo with virtuoso clarinetist Carjez Gerretsen.
• The 19th century — the era of discovery: a string sextet of young musicians from the CNSMD de Lyon offered an olfactory chamber music recital, performing works by Grieg, Britten, and Tchaikovsky that transported the audience from Florence to London via Scandinavia, following the casket's traces.
• A Middle Ages revisited by today's minds: the duo Jac Berrocal (free jazz trumpeter and singer) and Vincent Epplay offered a striking electro-medieval moment, creating sounds from bones, trumpets, bells, horns, and voices, followed by UtopikAuzon by poet Antoine Simon and a festive stroll by the Banda de Marcoussis through the narrow streets of the old town.

The « Coffrets d'Auzon » exhibition: thirty artists reinvented the casket

In parallel with the concerts, the festival hosted the « Coffrets d'Auzon » exhibition, presented at the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Portail and the Galerie Le Fumoir. Thirty artists and craftspeople had designed their own interpretation of the Auzon Casket, respecting the original dimensions of 23 × 19 × 13 cm. The works showcased a wide variety of techniques: cattail caskets with 3D printed locks, conceptual crosses, embroideries, lace, and many other original creations. The exhibition was freely accessible and offered guided tours in French, English, and Spanish.

An exceptional heritage foundation

Auzon, classified as a Petite Cité de Caractère, provided a remarkable setting for the festival. The Collégiale Saint-Laurent, a jewel of Romanesque architecture, itself houses unsuspected treasures: two Merovingian caskets from the 8th century were discovered in its 12th-century cross and have been subjected to scientific analysis. The citadel perched on its rock, the medieval streets, and the shaded squares formed an ideal backdrop for this festival that brought past and present into dialogue.