The collection

A collection is built before the walls

A museum is not a building : it is first a collection and a scholarly project. SpiLi's begins today — object by object, gift by gift, loan by loan. Everything that comes in now will be in the first exhibition, in 2028.

What we collect

Six families of objects

The collection documents the material culture of spirits: making, packaging, selling, serving, drinking, telling.

Bottles & flasks

Historic pieces, vanished shapes, period bottlings, limited series documenting how the container and the label evolved.

Stills & equipment

Complete stills or parts of them, vats, cellar tools, measuring instruments, cooperage equipment.

Posters & advertising

Lithographed posters, old point-of-sale displays, promotional objects — a major graphic heritage, particularly from the Belle Époque.

Archives & documents

Distillery ledgers, commercial correspondence, catalogues, technical manuals, photographs of works and harvests.

Glassware & the art of the bar

Tasting glasses, decanters, shakers, bar tools, counter furniture, cocktail recipe books.

Testimony

Filmed accounts by distillers, cellar masters, coopers and bartenders — the intangible heritage, and the most fragile of all.

The collection is still to be built : none of these images belongs to it. They are archive documents, arranged under the family they answer to — the apparatus, the advertisement, the workshop, the archive.

Stills & equipment

Black-and-white photograph of a still mounted on a four-wheeled cart chassis: boiler, copper head, column and condenser lined up on the trailer, shown on a fair stand. — The travelling still of the home distiller (bouilleur de cru), shown at the agricultural machinery fair in January 1927: the workshop comes to the orchard rather than the other way round. It is the French form of peasant distillation, and it fits on a trailer. *VIe salon de la machine agricole, alambic Coyac de Nantes*, Agence Rol (photographie de presse), 1927. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, ark:/12148/btv1b53172665b — public domain.

Posters & advertising

Highly ornate chromolithographed poster: the name « Grande Distillerie Centrale de Paris » in capitals on a red band, a medallion with the arms of Paris framed by palms, a shower of gold and silver exhibition medals, and the address « 222, rue Saint-Antoine ». — An 1891 poster for a Parisian distillery that no longer exists. It praises neither a taste nor a use: it lines up exhibition medals and a share capital. Nineteenth-century advertising for spirits argued through industrial awards, not through pleasure. *Grande distillerie centrale de Paris, Maison Marchand*, Imprimerie lithographique Camis, Paris, 1891. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, ark:/12148/btv1b53205591j — public domain.

Archives & documents

Hand-coloured woodcut: two large stills with conical heads on a masonry brick furnace, their necks leading to glass carboys; on the left, a distiller in a doublet collects the distillate in a demijohn. — The same 1509 print shows no longer an apparatus but a workshop: two stills on a single furnace, a man at work. Distillation is already a trade with its volumes, not a laboratory operation. *Les alambics de la distillerie*, 1509. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, ark:/12148/btv1b102188009 — public domain.

Archives & documents

Black-and-white photograph: the inside of a rum distillery, metal columns and vats; a man in a light suit and hat watches the equipment. — A Martinique distillery photographed around 1930, half a century before the AOC. The industry the appellation would come to consecrate was built in the colonial economy — the rum room documents it. *Industrie du rhum à la Martinique : distillateur*, Désiré Kervégant, 1930-1936. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, ark:/12148/btv1b10111961x — public domain.

Stills & equipment

Black-and-white photograph of a workshop: a small copper column still mounted on a burner, surrounded by a pair of scales, graduated cylinders, a wooden bucket and a cask on a trestle. — A test still at the end of the nineteenth century, in its workshop: scales, cylinders, cask. The apparatus is not an isolated object but a measuring instrument, amid what serves to check what it produces. *Alambic Estève*, 1897. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, ark:/12148/btv1b10719015n — public domain.

Posters & advertising

Black-and-white photograph of a Parisian notice board covered with official notices from 1914, among them a police prefecture order banning the sale of absinthe. — August 1914: on the walls of Paris, the ban on selling absinthe sits beside the mobilisation notices. The law of March 1915 would complete what the state of war had begun. *Ordonnances d'interdiction des distributeurs d'argent, de jetons et de vente d'absinthe, avis divers*, Agence Rol (photographie de presse), 1914. Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF, ark:/12148/btv1b6931264m — public domain.

Call for objects

The pieces we are looking for first

These objects are missing from the story the museum wants to tell. If you hold one — or know where to find one — write to us.

A small-capacity still

Charentais, pot or short-column, complete and transportable — the centrepiece of the teaching distillation space.

Absinthe equipment and bottles from before 1915

Fountains, spoons, dosing glasses, original bottles: documenting a heritage erased by prohibition.

Original posters from French distilleries

Late 19th to mid-20th century, all regions and all categories, including houses that no longer exist.

Archives of closed distilleries

Ledgers, plans, correspondence, photographs — the memory of houses that no longer exist is the most endangered.

Objects from the overseas territories and from cane

Rum-distillery tools, mills, documents from Caribbean and Réunion distilleries.

Bar books from before 1950

Cocktail manuals, bartenders' notebooks, menus from historic bars, in French as in English.

How it works

Three ways to contribute to the collection

The gift

You hand an object over to the project for good. It is inventoried, conserved and credited in your name (or anonymously, as you choose). A tax receipt can be issued once public-interest status is recognised.

The loan or deposit

You remain the owner; the object is exhibited or conserved for a period agreed by contract. The route collectors and houses usually prefer.

The tip-off

You own nothing, but you know where an important piece is — a distillery attic, an estate, an archive at risk. This is often the most valuable contribution of all.

State of the collection

The first pieces

The inventory is being built and will be published here as it grows, with the names of donors and lenders who wish to appear. Objects are recorded in the Atlas, the museum's documentary database.

First inventoried piece — the seat is still free.

Awaiting

Do you hold a piece ?

Describe it to us in a few lines — a photograph is enough to begin. We come back to you quickly.

Offer a piece