Night Corolla: Laguiole Knife in Purple Mammoth Molar – Sculpted Bee – Chiseled Spring and Bolsters

1659€

Above a handle as dark as the night sky, the bee opens like a flower, and that image gave “Night Corolla” its name. Only one exists, and it came entirely from the hands of one cutler in the Laguiole en Aubrac workshops. The handle is cut from purple mammoth molar: deep violet that shades into ink blue and then black, crossed by very fine white plates like chalk scratched across slate, and pierced here and there by flecks of fuchsia and electric blue. A thin black spacer separates the molar from its stainless steel liners.

At the head, the bee spreads into four wide petals, all stippled, laid out as a cross around a center, with two little lobes on top. Flower in bloom or insect with outspread wings? It is impossible to decide. Each petal is filled with dense stippling and outlined by polished ribs that trace its edge. Nothing ties her to a faithful likeness, which is exactly what makes her so striking at first sight.

The spring uses the same vocabulary. Stippled diamonds and lancets follow one another in opposing points, tight and even, along the whole knife, and the two bolsters pick them up as fans whose tips point down toward the handle and hug its curve. Every compartment was outlined with a deep line, then stippled at the bottom with a point, on a strip barely a few millimeters across, where a slip stays forever. The result is one continuous decoration from the bee down to the end of the handle, with no bare metal left anywhere.

Collectors who love pieces that are dark and luminous at once will find their match here. Fuchsia-flecked purple molar, a black spacer over stainless liners, a spring and bolsters chiseled with stippled diamonds, and a bee opened into a corolla make a tightly unified whole, designed to be admired as much as handled.

night corolla: laguiole knife in purple mammoth molar – sculpted bee – chiseled spring and bolsters

SKU: LEA PU - 1212 MOL MAM MARR - COR NUIT Category: One-of-a-Kind Laguiole Knives Category: One-of-a-Kind Laguiole Knives

Created in 1829 in the small village of Laguiole for local farmers, this knife has risen to become one of the most celebrated in France, distinguished by its emblematic bee, a symbol of prestige and quality.

Laguiole en Aubrac Knife in Purple Mammoth Molar

A bee that opens like a flower crowns this piece. Beneath it, the purple mammoth molar shades from a deep violet into inky blue and black, crossed by fine white plates and lit with flecks of fuchsia and electric blue, all of it bordered in black against the stainless steel liners.

Four broad stippled petals around a core, topped by two small lobes, make up the bee. The spring repeats that vocabulary in diamonds and lancets set point to point, and the bolsters extend it in fans that reach down toward the handle.

4.7" (12 cm) handle in purple mammoth molar. Black spacer, stainless steel liners.
Exclusive model: one of a kind, never to be reproduced.
Blade in Sandvik 12C27MOD stainless steel.
Sculpted bee in the form of a flower. Chiseled spring and two chiseled bolsters.
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 manufacturing defects.

A handle like the night sky, a lattice of diamonds in steel, and a bee in full bloom above it all. This flower opens only once, and there will be no other. If dark colors with a spark of light are your weakness, make it yours now.

Deep violet slips into ink blue and black across the molar, crossed by fine white plates and pierced by flecks of fuchsia and electric blue. Along the spring, stippled diamonds and lancets meet point to point, and both bolsters open them into fans that reach toward the handle. At the head, the bee unfolds like a flower in the dark, four broad stippled petals set in a cross with two small lobes above.

Description

This knife has the color of a moonless sky. The handle runs from deep violet into ink blue and in places into black, crossed by hairline white plates, like the scratches chalk leaves on a slate. And here and there, flashes of fuchsia and electric blue pierce the mass, nearly phosphorescent, like glimmers caught at the bottom of the dark. What you see are the plates of a mammoth molar, which grew in the living animal and then spent millennia sealed in the frozen steppe.

Over this night, the decoration sets down its geometry, clean and free of extra ornament. Along the spring, stippled diamonds and lancets alternate in opposing points without one irregularity from end to end, and the two bolsters take them up in fans whose points descend toward the handle. Each compartment was traced with a deep line, then its floor stippled, one at a time, across a few millimeters, and once the graver had gone in, there was no going back.

Then, at the summit, it blooms. The bee opens four wide stippled petals in a cross around a core, with two small lobes above, and speaks the same language as the spring and bolsters, as though the decoration had flowered on reaching the top. She no longer resembles an insect. She looks like a corolla that opened up there in the dark with no one around to see it. That encounter is the whole of “Night Corolla”: violet like the depth of the night sky, a few sparks of fuchsia breaking through, and above them, this flower of steel in full bloom.

Purple Mammoth Molar

The raw material begins in the frozen ground of Siberia, Alaska, or Canada, where remains of the woolly mammoth, a species long extinct, are still being unearthed. What comes out is a cheek tooth, one of the most complex structures in the animal world: layer upon layer of dentin folded into enamel and cemented in place, in teeth a mammoth grew afresh several times during its life.

As found, the fossil is too porous and fragile to become a handle. It is stabilized first, with resin drawn in under vacuum, and comes out dense and durable, immune to rot. That same step brings the violet seen here, because untreated molar only ranges from cream to brown. Sawing and polishing then open the inner architecture into bands that never repeat. Heavy in the hand and cool at first touch, it shows a mineral polish that wood never reaches.

The fuchsia and electric blue flecks on "Night Corolla" only appear at certain angles, and the handle reads darker or brighter as the light changes. It exists in a single example, and this is it.

Night Corolla: Laguiole Knife in Purple Mammoth Molar – Sculpted Bee – Chiseled Spring and Bolsters

Laguiole en Aubrac Knife in Purple Mammoth Molar

Purple Mammoth Molar

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