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| | | | | THE LAGUIOLE’S FORGES | | | | | THE LAGUIOLE’S FORGES (54 photos) |  Send this reportage | | “At that time, blacksmiths were wizards a little. Fire, iron and water would put magic into their fingertips. Knife is male but blade is female and the forge’s spirit that had knowlege in grammar and women, gave the blade and then the knife’s handle, the shape of a caress.” | | © BONY./TheReportage.com | | Categories: Economy, Trade, Design, Offbeat, Men Interest, News, Industry, Portrait, Summer, Winter, Spring, Autumn |  |
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 Page 1 2 3 4  Page 1 2 3 4 | | | | Pierre-Jean Calmels, blacksmith at Laguiole, designed the first Laguiole knife in 1829, drawing inspiration from two models, the Capuchalou, usual knife of peasants of the Aubrac region, and from the spanish Navaja, brought from Catalonia by seasonal workers.
The hardest steel quenched in the purest water, the water of Laguiole village’s spring, a spring to bend the blade, a handle shaped in the horn of Aubrac’s oxen ... the exeptional knife was born.
Over the years Pierre-Jean Calmels improved his work and was not long to impose his bending knife that answered the shepards and breeders needs, and from 1840 added a stamp to it.
From 1880 the Laguiole knife enriches with a new piece : the corkscrew.
Its apparition remains linked to wine sold in bottles in the urban society, but also to the demand from people from the Aveyron department gone for the conquest of parisians cafés.
Owners and waiters remained very faithfull to their traditions and were proud to show the three pice knife out of their jaket.
From the end of the XIXth century, the rustic knife became a very trendy accessory within the upper middle class and could be decorated with precious materials such as ivory.
The ornemental details of the handle and spring were diversifying from 1910. The sculpture that was decorating the head of the spring of the first models knew different stylistic evolutions such as diamond, lily flower, four-leaf clover, leaf, the profile of a man wearing a phrygian hat, before adopting the one that will become the Laguiole knife’s emblem : the bee.
The Laguiole made a great success within the aveyronese community with inhabitants as well as with exiled people.
Unfortunately this success was short : war, rural exodus but mainly the indutrialisation of the cutlery of the town of Thiers nearby, dreadful competition for the aveyronese knife which went through a crises without precedent.
Today, continuity or modernity, the Laguiole by Laguiole still is not done with inspiring talents. Philippe Starck, Yan Pennor's, Eric Raffy, Sonia Rykiel, Hermès, Courrèges, Jean-Michel Wilmotte ... are reinterpreting the Laguiole.
From 1988, when Philippe Starck designed a Laguiole with a polished aluminium handle and a inalterable steel blade, the knife becomes a definitely modern object. It seduced France and United States.
It was even selected by the Colbert Committee to be exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York, on the occasion of an exhibition on the Art of living in France, and then in the mythical MOMA ( Museum of Modern Arts ) in the permanent Design collection.
In 1990 Yan Pennor's lent himself to also play the game, and designed a shapely model with a very stylish fly. The “Stratégie and Marketing Mix” group rewarded Forge de Laguiole by confering it up in 1991 the French Grand Prix of design object.
In 1992, the architect Eric Raffy proposes a very clean version of Laguiole, with tight lines that wins the “ Blade Magazine Award” of the most innovative design at the Atlanta fair (USA).
This same year, Forge of Laguiole is rewarded with a place in the French pavilion at the Universal Exhibition of Sevillia where it wins the European Design Price for its creative approach.
In 1995, the Laguiole becomes synonym of luxury with being reinterpreted by the Hermès House. The Herlag model is created illustrating the deep complementarity of two very different professions : leather and steel.
The same year, Sonia Rykiel, famous for her fashion works, collaborates with Forge de Laguiole in order to redesign the shape of the knowned knife. She is the first to give it a feminine dimension to this originally rustic knife with her red, black and gold model.
In a worry of diversification, Forge de Laguiole launched a corkscrew model at the end of year 1995 : le Sommelier. In 1996, the house is rewarded with the Prix Design Plus in Ambiente at the International Fair of Frankfurt, for its new technical qualities and its exeptional design.
Its mecanism principle is patented and registered in march 1989.
In september 2002, it is Courrèges’turn to create two Laguiole models. The parisian Haute Couture House’s stamp is recognizable in the knife’s pure and elegant lines, and Laguioles’s in the material’s know-how.
Resolutely modern, they are displayed in a transparent case.
In september 2004, Jean-Michel Wilmotte works with his team of Studio Design W. on the creation of a very innovative model of table knife out of acrylic glass with fluo acid colors (blue, lila, yellow, pink, fuchsia, yellow green and red) as well as a new Sommelier (corkscrew). Followed too a little closing knife in the same colors than the table knifes and marketized in january 2005. |
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