Laguiole Bee Back Knife in Pink and Purple Elder Burl – Chiseled Spring

689€

Handmade from first step to last in the Laguiole en Aubrac workshops, by cutlers who rank among the house’s best, this Bee Back is strictly one of a kind. It takes the rare route of a single wood from end to end: pink and purple elder burl wraps the entire handle in a marbling of pink, deep purple and midnight blue, peppered with golden and cream eyes that dot the surface like tiny suns. Resin stabilization gives these colors to a burl that is naturally cream to beige, and it firms the wood up to the density and hardness you would expect from an engineered material, fit for everyday carry.

On a piece this organic, the only steel you see with the blade folded is the bee and the spring it controls. Finely worked and placed at the back of the handle, level with the thumb, the bee is where all the mechanics of this Bee Back live. There is no bolster and no added ornament, only wood, blade and bee. The luxury here lies in the movement and in the precise fitting that makes it possible, far more than in any piling on of detail.

So here is that movement. The bee tilts under your thumb and calls every shot. Rock it toward the locked side and the blade is sealed in the handle, so the piece travels closed and secure and no bump or jolt will open it. Tilt it toward release and the blade rises on its own, ready to be grasped and opened to the traditional forced notch. The spring behind all this is chiseled with a frieze of small linked scrolls between two polished liners, pierced in places so the decoration has room to breathe, much like the wood surrounding it.

Restraint is the whole point of this Bee Back: a single material that dazzles from end to end, a single mechanism that is unique in the world and was awarded as such, and a single cutler’s skill to bring them together. People choose it because everything about it hangs together, as much as for the colors, and they keep it because there will never be another, at Laguiole en Aubrac or anywhere else.

laguiole bee back knife in pink and purple elder burl – chiseled spring

SKU: LEA PU - BEEBACK LPE SUR VIOLET Category: One-of-a-Kind Laguiole Knives Category: One-of-a-Kind Laguiole Knives

Born in the workshops of the Laguiole en Aubrac manufacture, the Bee Back reinvents the Laguiole knife: its emblematic bee becomes a mechanism and locks the blade, an innovation crowned at the IWA Knife Award 2023.

Laguiole en Aubrac Bee Back Knife in Pink and Purple Elder Burl

This Bee Back goes for purity. A single wood dresses the whole handle, pink and purple elder burl marbled with deep purple and midnight blue and peppered with golden eyes on every face. Free of bolsters and added ornament, the burl has the stage to itself.

The tilting bee carries all the mechanics of the model on its own, locking the closed blade, lifting it slightly on release and freeing it to open to the forced notch. The spring is chiseled with a frieze of linked scrolls, pierced in places and set between two polished liners.

Full handle in stabilized Pink and Purple Elder Burl.
Exclusive model: this piece is one of a kind and will never be reproduced.
Stainless 12C27 steel blade, 3.1" (8 cm) cutting edge. Closed length 4.5" (11.5 cm).
Blade locked closed by tilting the bee. Forced notch.
Spring chiseled with volutes. First prize, Innovation, IWA 2023.
Made entirely by hand by a single cutler.
Cotton pouch and numbered certificate of authenticity included.
14-page guide to the craftsmanship charter of the authentic Laguiole included.
Lifetime warranty against any manufacturing defect.

Material and movement, face to face: a pink and purple dusk dotted with golden eyes, and a bee that handles locking, release and lift with nothing else in between.

Pink, deep purple and midnight blue swirl through the elder along the full handle, lit by dozens of golden and cream eyes. Along the spine, the spring unfolds its chain of small chiseled scrolls, open in places and framed by two polished liners. At the rear, the finely worked bee shows the only other steel on the closed piece, right where the thumb comes to rest.

Description

Bee Backs usually combine two materials. This one makes do with one. Its elder burl rolls a pink and purple dusk across the whole handle, streaked with deep purple and midnight blue, and dozens of golden eyes open inside it: knots in the wood, rimmed in cream, scattered like city lights spotted from a plane window at nightfall. Each side shows a different scene and every shift of light uncovers another, so you never quite finish exploring it, and there is always one more eye you had missed.

All that color rests on a mechanism of great simplicity. One tilt of the bee locks the closed blade; another releases it, and the blade rises gently toward your hand before opening to the forced notch. Developed in the Laguiole en Aubrac workshops, this system was named the Innovation winner of the 2023 IWA Knife Award, at the largest cutlery show on the planet. It is the most talked-about movement in recent French knifemaking, put to work here on the most colorful piece in the series.

As for the outline, it remains pure Bee Back: crisp corners, flat-cut panels on the handle and a faceted blade, a contemporary design that nothing softens, assembled, chiseled and polished by one cutler using time-honored methods. That may be exactly where this piece hits the mark. A wood that throws a party, a disciplined line, an award-winning mechanism, and nothing more: no excess, no extra flourish, only material and movement left face to face, each bringing out the best in the other. Call it a pocket-sized lesson in balance, one no other knife in the world will ever repeat.

Pink and Purple Elder Burl

Elder burl takes shape in swellings on the trunk, where the grain wraps around knots in patterns no one can predict. Here a single sweep of it covers the handle, marbled in pink, deep purple and midnight blue and scattered with dozens of golden and cream eyes that switch on like lights at dusk. Vacuum stabilization fills the grain with resin and brings this palette with it, since untreated elder tops out somewhere between cream and pale beige. The treatment also makes the burl denser, harder and fully stable over time.

To dress a full handle in one burl, you need a block that is unusually large and even. A typical elder burl gives a cutler enough for one scale at most; this one gave a whole handle. Silky and full in the hand and unaffected by moisture, it makes this Bee Back easy to pick out among a thousand.

This is a twilight that will never come around again, and it fits in your pocket.

Laguiole Bee Back Knife in Pink and Purple Elder Burl – Chiseled Spring

Laguiole en Aubrac Bee Back Knife in Pink and Purple Elder Burl

Pink and Purple Elder Burl

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