Two-Material Laguiole Bee Back Knife in Green Elder Burl and Carbon Fiber – Guilloché Liners

595€

This Bee Back exists in a single example. Laguiole en Aubrac entrusted it to one of its finest cutlers, who made every part of it by hand. Its handle is built from two materials. Toward the blade, green elder burl throws bright pools of golden yellow across a dark field; the green comes from the resin used to stabilize the wood, since untreated elder ranges from cream to beige. Toward the bee, green carbon fiber shows deep, marbled layers that shift as the light moves. Where they meet, a slim metal line flanked by red spacers draws the border and makes the construction easy to read.

A traditional Laguiole wears its bee as a fixed ornament. On this Bee Back the bee has a job to do. Positioned at the rear of the handle, standing slightly proud of it and engraved with a fine radiating pattern, it is the part everything else depends on: a true mechanical component, fitted to be worked every day without loosening over time. The eye goes to it first, and the thumb finds it without searching.

The mechanism, honored for its ingenuity, comes down to a single movement. Tilt the bee and the blade is yours. With the piece closed, the bee acts as a safety catch and keeps the blade locked inside the handle, so it cannot open by accident in a pocket or in your hand. Once released, the blade lifts a little out of its slot on its own, ready to be pinched and swung open in one smooth motion to the traditional forced notch. Stainless steel liners, worked along their entire length in a pattern of arcs and points, frame the whole sequence.

This Bee Back answers two passions at once. One is invention, in the form of a locking system found nowhere else. The other is the rigor of a showpiece: rare materials worked together, guilloché done by hand, and a run that begins and ends with this single example. Carry it, use it and show it off every day, or give it pride of place in a collection: it was built for both.

two material laguiole bee back knife in green elder burl and carbon fiber – guilloché liners

SKU: LEA PU - BEEBACK MCL - LPE SUR VER/FC VERT 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 Elder Burl and Carbon Fiber

This Bee Back combines the mechanism honored at the 2023 IWA Knife Award with materials worthy of a one-off: green elder burl pooled with golden yellow, green carbon fiber with a marbled look, a central metal line and red spacers.

Tip the bee one way and the closed blade stays locked; tip it back and the blade rises slightly from the handle before opening to the forced notch, a movement new to the Laguiole world and developed in the Laguiole en Aubrac workshops. Hand-guilloché stainless steel liners carry the house finish.

Two materials: Green Elder Burl and Carbon Fiber. Red spacers.
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.
First prize, Innovation, IWA Knife Award 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.

In one hand, two centuries of Laguiole tradition and the most inventive mechanism Laguiole en Aubrac has ever produced: a bee that finally has real work to do.

Golden-yellow pools glow through the deep green of the elder, while the carbon fiber answers with dark marbling that changes each time the piece turns in the light. The stainless liners carry a pattern of arcs and points, filed by hand along their full length. At the back of the handle, the engraved bee sits slightly proud of the handle, ready under the thumb to release the blade.

Description

Nothing about the Bee Back follows the usual Laguiole template, and that was the whole idea. Where the classic silhouette follows soft curves handed down over two centuries, this one pulls every line tight: the blade is all crisp angles, the handle is cut into flat planes, and the profile reads as sharp, graphic and thoroughly modern. Lay it next to a traditional model and the two look a generation apart, yet both leave the same workshop. For all its break with convention, it holds on to the house fundamentals: hand assembly, file-cut guilloché and painstaking fitting down to the smallest part.

The tilting bee began as one cutler’s idea, worked out on a workbench at Laguiole en Aubrac, and no Laguiole had ever carried anything like it. Word spread fast across the cutlery trade. Nuremberg, 2023: at the IWA show, the biggest event the industry holds anywhere, the jury of the IWA Knife Award ranked the Bee Back first in the Innovation category. The bee you operate on this piece is that very design, recognized in front of professionals from every corner of the globe.

This version takes the concept as far as it can go. Its green elder burl, splashed with golden yellow, exists exactly once, and no other burl will place those pockets in those same spots. The green carbon fiber, borrowed from motorsport and aerospace, picks up the wood with its dark marbling, while the red spacers stitch a bright seam between the two. Old-school craft, cutting-edge materials and a prizewinning lock tying them together: at 4.5 inches closed, this piece sums up what Laguiole en Aubrac can do today.

Green Elder Burl

Elder burl comes from the knotty swellings that form on the trunk. Inside them the grain twists back on itself into unpredictable figure, broken up by pale pockets and tight knots. Few burls used in knifemaking are as expressive. On this piece, wide golden-yellow patches break through the dark green, catching like light trapped in the grain. Vacuum stabilization drives resin deep into every fiber, and the green you see comes from that treatment; natural elder runs from cream to light beige. The resin also leaves the burl denser, harder and steadier.

Stabilized elder has a full, silky feel and shrugs off moisture and daily handling. The golden pockets fall where they fall on this burl and nowhere else, so no other handle will show this pattern.

Carbon Fiber

Carbon fiber made its name in aerospace and motorsport before fine knifemaking adopted it for what only it can offer: stiffness and lightness no natural material can match, along with real visual depth. The green version used here spreads out in dark, moving layers of marbling that shift with the angle of the light, mirroring the elder's figure on the far side of the metal line.

Cool when you first pick it up, it warms quickly in the hand and stays perfectly stable over time, giving the rear of the handle a modern, technical anchor.

This Bee Back brings wood and carbon together, the workshop and the lab: two materials with nothing in common, matched on this one piece by one cutler.