Bergère de volet – Lo Vedo Life

What’s a shutter dog?
A shutter dog is a piece of hardware mounted to the outside wall of a building, and it’s designed to hold a shutter open so the shutter doesn’t flap around in the wind. If you do an online search for “shutter dog,” you’ll get results for hardware companies and blacksmiths who make hardware that goes by several names: tieback, holdback, hold-opens, shutter stays, and my favorite, shutter dogs.

Here in France, the term for a shutter dog is arrêt de volet (shutter stop) or the more colorful bergère de volet (shutter shepherdess). We also see tête de bergère (shepherdess head), or when the head is obviously male, it’s a tête de berger. The word is pronounced bair-jhair.

I think they’re wonderful, and I stop to photograph them often enough that I have a pretty good collection of photos. Now I only make a photo when I see a form that I don’t already have, or when the color or setting is interesting.