The Bois d'Épense factory, known as "Des Islettes” was the biggest of the Argonne earthenware factories, especially among those producing artistic earthenware. The date it was built can’t be determined exactly, but there are records of it as far back as 1737. From 1756, it was passed down from father to son by the Bernard dynasty for almost a century. At the time, it was very large, employing over 300 workers a year. The variety of themes is extraordinary, and may come as a surprise to enthusiasts who had no idea that such masterpieces and rarities were being produced in Les Islettes at the time. When Bernard's last son, Joseph-Désiré, died, his widow kept the business going for eight years and then sold it to the Godechel brothers in 1840. It was facing stiff competition from factories in Lunéville and Sarreguemine, which are delivering more sophisticated, modern and cheaper products. The factory closed in 1848. When it was sold, the buildings were demolished, leaving only the master's house, the employees' accommodation, the chapel and a few outbuildings. After a small tarmac road leading out of the village, the property is approached via a path running alongside the chapel and after passing through a wrought iron gate, framed by heavy stone pilasters topped with acorns. A vast gravel courtyard provides parking for a large number of vehicles. Flowerbeds and large trees form a backdrop to it. All of the buildings are set in a row to its left, starting with the country manor, followed by staff accommodation and outbuildings, and a few metres after a vast woodshed. The grounds stretch out all around, with a wooded area with a small dacha on stilts built in the 20th century near a natural pond fed intermittently by a spring, a remarkable oak tree at the edge of the meadows, and a vegetable garden near the outbuildings. Finally, at the rear of the manor house, a porch overlooks a white pebbled terrace.

The country manor

The ground floor
The stone staircase, which is framed by mischievous putti, leads to an oak double door that opens onto a hall with an imposing Lorraine stove in it, opposite the staircase that leads to the upper floors. Paved with black cabochon tiles, it leads to an office with oak parquet flooring in a ladder pattern and a niche topped by a stucco wall tie and framed by panelled cupboards. It faces the kitchen, which is fitted with a traditional built-in stove in the stone fireplace. The room has a tiled floor, which connects to the pantry before the dining room. The oak parquet flooring combines a ladder pattern and panels. The wooden fireplace, painted to look like marble, is framed by panelling that incorporates an elegant corner. The door opens into the living room and is topped by a diamond-shaped fanlight. It has a faux marble fireplace with Directoire period woodwork and herringbone parquet flooring. These two rooms, which are particularly bright as they are south-facing, have patio doors that open onto steps leading straight out onto the grounds.
The first floor
The oak staircase with wrought iron balusters rising up from the entrance hall leads to a passageway and two bedrooms facing each other. Each has a 19th-century black marble fireplace framed by wooden cupboards. One of them has a shower room with a toilet, while the second is in need of restoration. In the passageway, which was discovered when the house was restored, the wall is elegantly decorated with fragments of a panoramic wallpaper named "Pizarre chez les incas" by the Joseph Dufour et Leroy factory, created in around 1818, which tells the story of Pizarre's conquest of Peru in 1532. This scene depicts the celebration of the Festival of the Sun at the Cuzco temple. This is followed by a third bedroom, which has the same architectural elements as the previous ones and which connects to a shower room with a toilet. The fourth bedroom on this floor, which is preceded by a wardrobe, still has an 18th century fireplace in finely painted wood and a bathroom with a toilet that is currently being fitted out. The four bedrooms have working wood-burning stoves to complement the central heating, overmantels with mirrors and authentic oak parquet flooring laid out in a ladder pattern.
The second floor
This floor is simpler. It has a pine parquet floor and six bedrooms, one of which is in need of restoration, a shower room and two toilets. It also includes a comfortable room measuring around 35 m², lit by three windows overlooking the grounds. This is where the current owner, a dressmaker and fashion designer, imagines and creates clothes from old fabrics. Finally, the attic above, which measures around 50 m², is lit by a single dormer window.
The basement
A wooden door in the cloakroom conceals a stone staircase leading down to the basement, which is divided into four rooms covering around 120 m². A boiler room is equipped with a Viessmann town gas boiler installed in 2002 in the place of the old bread oven. A stone pool measuring approx. 8.5 m² is fed by a spring that joins the remarkable well located next to the stairway on the main façade via open conduits.