French market vocabulary· French
Usure du temps
In English use: The wear of time
The wear of time — the slow accumulated alteration that no forger can reproduce.
The poetic French phrase for the cumulative, unstoppable alteration caused by the simple passing of decades or centuries. Lumped together with érosion and xylophages, l'usure du temps is the irreducible authenticity marker that distinguishes a long-ritualised piece from a recent workshop product.