How to Identify and Date a Vintage Idéale Saddle

If Brooks is the English saddle everyone knows, Idéale is the French one everyone wants. For most of the 20th century, the saddles of Pont-Saint-Pierre, in Normandy, sat under randonneurs, racers and constructeurs all over France and well beyond, and a nice one still turns heads at a swap meet. Dating one, however, takes a little more work than reading a stamp.

Because here is the first thing to know: an Idéale carries no date code. No catalog, maker’s statement or collector record describes one, and the numbers you will find on the saddle are something different. The model number sits in the badge on the side. Professionnel-grade saddles carry a serial number on the cantle plate, but it is the number of a guarantee, not a date. From around 1950, the firm issued a numbered, open-ended guarantee voucher with its best saddles and no register survives to turn the number into a year. Saddles on alloy frames carry a two-digit chassis number, which identifies the chassis and nothing more. The only Idéale serial numbers that do encode a date are under the saddles made in Toulouse since 2013, where the first four digits give the year and month the hide arrived, which at least makes one of those gorgeous, modern reissues easier to spot.

What an older Idéale does give you is its model, its badge and its materials, and those changed at moments that the catalogs, the advertising and the French trade press record. Read them together and most Idéales can be placed within a decade or two, often closer.

First, is it an Idéale?

Idéale saddles were made by the Tron family’s firm, at Pont-Saint-Pierre for most of their history. The firm changed its name several times, from Tron et Baillard in 1893 to Tron & Berthet from 1928, but the saddles never spelled it out. The maker appears only as two initials on the leather itself, in the small roundels on either side of the IDÉALE oval in the side badge, and those initials are the first dating clue:

• F and T belong to the earlier saddles. They are on the badges drawn in the 1927 Tron & Enfants advertisement and in the Tron & Berthet catalog of about 1936. What the F stands for is not recorded; F. Tron, the name on the firm’s 1910 letterhead, is a good guess.
• T and B, for Tron & Berthet, are on the badges by about 1950, when the firm’s numbered guarantee card draws one. The firm had been Tron & Berthet since 1928, so the roundels lagged the name, and nobody has pinned down when they changed. The change came somewhere between the catalog of about 1936, which still shows F and T, and about 1950, so an F and T badge is from before 1950 and a T and B badge from after 1936.
• The late badges change shape. The top racing and touring models of the 1960s to the 1980s carry a rounded-rectangle badge, with SPÉCIALE COMPÉTITION over T 90 B on the No. 90 and Diagonale in script on the No. 92. The Rilsan saddles of the 2000 series wear an applied black oval label instead of an embossed badge. And a late Cyclo-Touriste 75 reads FRENCH DESIGN where earlier badges say MADE IN FRANCE.

Find the model number

Like Brooks, Tron & Berthet numbered its saddles and put the number on the saddle itself, in a small circle or box inside the side badge. The engravings in the catalog of about 1936 show it there, a 63, a 55 or a 78, and the No. 90 brochure of about 1969 draws a 90 in the same place. Find the number and you have the model, and the model is where dating an Idéale starts. Ignore any letters a catalog adds to it: 90A, 90CR and 90-3 are dealer designations, and the badge on the saddle reads simply 90.

With a number in hand, turn to Ebykr’s Saddle Model Explorer, which lists 91 Idéale models with the catalogs that show them. A few of the numbers you are most likely to meet, with the earliest dated evidence we have found for each:

Model	Earliest dated evidence	What it is
52	the 1927 Tron & Enfants advertisement	a 29 cm racing saddle on Idéale’s patented single-point fitting, later made in Record and Professionnel grades
51	the catalog of about 1936	a 29 cm Type Record racing saddle in oak-tanned leather
57	the catalog of about 1936	a racing saddle on an all-alloy chassis, about 430 g, with perforated wings; the catalog calls it the Critérium des Alpes, but the saddles themselves say Type Record
55 and 56	the catalog of about 1936	narrow cyclotouring saddles, the 56 with twisted rear springs
63	the catalog of about 1936	the Chanteloup type, built for cyclotourism and tandem
48, 49, 53, 58 and 59	the guarantee card of about 1950	Professionnel racing saddles, the 49 and 53 in steel and the 48, 58 and 59 in duralumin
90	shown in Paris in 1964, the maker says; the brochure of about 1969	the Spéciale Compétition, the flagship, in steel or light alloy
2000, 2001 and 2002	1973	the Rilsan series, bare or covered in hide, the 2002 with a layer of foam; the 2003 followed, and the Randonneuse 2004 by 1979
92	1981, “new this year”	the Diagonale touring saddle, 2 cm wider across a flatter cantle plate than the 90

One trap before you settle on a model: Idéale used some numbers twice, or even three times. The No. 80 was a 1930s heavyweight with twisted rear springs, then an 80 Type Record on duralumin rails like the one above, then the 1970s steel-framed 80 Record, Spéciale and Critérium. Three completely different saddles, one common model number, The 88 of 1963 is not the “completely new” low-profile 88 of 1981. The 45, 60, 61, 70 and 134 all changed character, too, and the 1970s range reused 2, 3, 14 and 22 from the 1930s. A number tells you the model only when the saddle in your hands matches the catalog picture for it.

Read the frame and the top

Once you know the model, the materials narrow the dating window further:

• The alloy stamps. An Idéale on a duralumin frame usually carries the alloy maker’s mark, stamped in a shield, and the marks seem to run in order. The earliest reads MÉTAL DE LA Sté DU DURALUMIN, for the Société du Duralumin. Then comes DURALUMIN, MÉTAL DE LA CÉGÉDUR, for a firm founded in 1943. Then ALLIAGE LÉGER TRAITÉ FORTAL, the mark on the alloy 90 and on Ebykr’s own 80 Type Record. The Cégédur date is firm, so a Cégédur stamp means 1943 or later; the rest of the sequence is our reading of a handful of saddles, so treat it as a guide rather than a rule. The two digits stamped either side of the shield make up the chassis number, not a model or a date.
• A rubber top marks the Idéale-Dunlop. It is often described as a wartime substitute for scarce leather, but it was on offer for every type of Idéale by September 1935, and the catalog of about 1936 carries its label, so a rubber-topped Idéale can be pre-war.
• The rodée main stamp, with Daniel Rebour’s signature, pressed into the top toward the back, means the leather was broken in by hand at the factory to Rebour’s recipe, a treatment the maker dates to 1969. The No. 90 brochure of about 1969 says so in as many words: “Stamped ‘rodee main’ (hand-treated) according to the recommendations of Daniel Rebour.” On the 1970s range sheets the standard steel 90 is black enamel and the rodée main version chromed. The stamp means 1969 or later, but not necessarily Pont-Saint-Pierre: it also turns up on the Columbia, sold under the Idéale name after 1985.
• A Rilsan base under a leather cover marks the 2000 series, launched in 1973, and a titanium frame the later versions of the 2003 and the Randonneuse 2004.
• CROUPON GARANTI, in an oval on the flap, is a leather grade: guaranteed butt hide. The phrase is already in the catalog of about 1936, but nobody knows when the oval stamp began, so it does not date a saddle on its own.

Match it to a catalog

The Ebykr Catalog Archive holds 25 Idéale documents, from the 1927 Tron & Enfants advertisement to the British and American mail-order pages of 1979 and 1981, and between them they are the dating tool. The catalog of about 1936 shows the range in its prime, with the cheaper Elaedy and Nortex lines alongside much fancier models. The pages of Gene Portuesi’s Cyclo-pedia, from about 1966 and about 1974, show what an American buyer could actually order, and the 1979 Ron Kitching catalog lays out the last full range, from the 80 Record to the titanium 2003 and the Randonneuse 2004.

Paper can be dated more closely than saddles, because the name printed on it changed over time:

Name on the paper	In print
Tron et Baillard	1893 to May 1894
Tron et Cie, later F. Tron et Cie	1894 to 1899
F. Tron	the 1900s and 1910s
Tron et Enfants	1924 to 1928
Tron et Berthet, styled F. & J. Tron & Berthet in 1929 to 1931	from November 1928
Ets Tron & Berthet	from 1935
Tron & Berthet, 27360 Pont Saint Pierre	1972 to 1985, by its postcode and telephone number

Read the pictures with more care than the words. An advertisement’s engraving can be years older than the advertisement: Idéale advertisements of the 1950s and early 1960s still print an F and T engraving of the No. 57, so never date a badge style from an advertisement’s drawing.

The end of the story is a dating tool, too. The Pont-Saint-Pierre works went into compulsory liquidation in 1981, the date the local history supports best, though dates from 1980 to 1984 circulate. The Idéale name carried on under new owners: a Columbia saddle advertised by Ets Lonchampt of Pontault-Combault dates from October 1985 or later by its eight-digit Paris-region telephone number. Since 2013, Idéale saddles have been made again, in Toulouse. If you have an Idéale catalog, price list or advertisement, please add it through Docs Drop and it becomes a dating tool for everyone.

Put it together: a worked example

Suppose a black leather racing saddle turns up with large copper rivets, a chromed steel frame, a rodée main selon Rebour stamp toward the back of the top and a badge on the side reading SPÉCIALE COMPÉTITION, T 90 B and MADE IN FRANCE.

1. The badge and the shape make it a No. 90 Spéciale Compétition on the steel frame, and the T and B make it a Tron & Berthet saddle.
2. The rodée main stamp puts it at 1969 or later, the year the maker gives for Rebour’s hand-breaking treatment, and a chromed frame is just what the rodée main version came with on the 1970s range sheets.
3. Turn it over. There is no serial number underneath, so it is not one of the Toulouse 90s made since 2013.
4. The 90 is still in the 1979 Ron Kitching catalog, and the Pont-Saint-Pierre works closed in 1981.

Answer: a No. 90, most likely made at Pont-Saint-Pierre between 1969 and the early 1980s. That is a 12 year window rather than a year, but it is an honest one, and if the bicycle it came on can be dated, the saddle often goes along for the ride.

Log it and go deeper

For the model you have in your hands, the Idéale Saddles and Clips model guide lists every model Ebykr has found in the catalogs, with the years that cite it. For the company behind it, read Idéale Saddles: Behind the Leather Curtain and the Idéale timeline, and for the best pictures of the saddles themselves, the Idéale gallery. If yours will not give up its number, or carries a mark this guide does not explain, bring photographs of the side, the cantle and the underside to the Idéale identification topic on the forums. A numbered cantle plate, an alloy stamp or a guarantee card would be especially welcome, because Ebykr holds no photograph of any of them yet. And for its English cousin, see How to Identify and Date a Vintage Brooks Saddle.

Idéale

Full coverage of Idéale

Ebykr documents this marque across the archive. Here is the rest of it.

Follow

Articles6 articlesTimelineThe dated spineImages171 imagesArchive documents25 catalogs, advertisements and posters