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

595€

Laguiole en Aubrac’s finest cutlers built this Bee Back by hand from top to bottom, and no second copy will follow. Its multicolor elder burl, on the blade side, could hang on a gallery wall: across a midnight-blue ground, knots have opened into eyes, each circled in orange, coral or cream, each in its own place and none matching another. Credit the resin used to stabilize the wood for that palette, since untouched elder never gets past cream and beige. On the bee side, Golden Matter carbon fiber spreads a dark field shot with golden threads. A slim central line with red spacers on both sides manages the handoff from one material to the other.

Beauty made the Laguiole bee famous the first time around. Perched at the back of this handle, it becomes famous all over again, this time for its intelligence. It is finely worked, sits right under the thumb and sets the pace for the whole piece: every opening starts with it and every closing ends with it. For two hundred years, admiration was all anyone asked of it; on the Bee Back it clocks in for work, with a watchmaker’s precision.

The entire mechanism lives inside that tilt. Set the bee to its locked position and the blade is held deep in the handle, so the piece travels shut, safe and silent, whether in a pants pocket or deep in a tote. Tilt the bee and the blade stirs, easing slightly out of its slot on its own and waiting for your fingers to swing it out in one fluid motion to the forced notch. The stainless steel liners frame the action with arcs and points filed along their full length, pairing a mechanism built on rigor with ornament built on patience.

Color lovers who refuse to compromise on engineering will feel at home with this Bee Back. The handle looks like a painted sky, the carbon glows with golden threads, the liners are guilloché by hand, and the bee lock belongs to this model alone. This one-off is a joy to look at and all business in use, and it is built to last.

two material laguiole bee back knife in multicolor elder burl and golden matter carbon fiber – guilloché liners

SKU: LEA PU - BEEBACK MC - LPE SUR MUL/FC GMAT 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 Multicolor Elder Burl and Carbon Fiber

This Bee Back shows off a burl that ranks among the most striking in the series: multicolor elder on a midnight-blue ground, speckled with knots shaped like eyes in orange, coral and cream. Opposite sits Golden Matter carbon fiber laced with golden threads, with a central line framed in red between them.

The tilting bee performs its signature routine. It keeps the folded blade locked, raises it a fraction when released, and leaves the rest of the opening, all the way to the forced notch, to your fingers. Stainless steel liners, filed by hand with guilloché arcs and points, surround this internationally recognized mechanism.

Two materials: Multicolor Elder Burl and Golden Matter 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.
Hand-guilloché liners. 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.

A storm sky full of ember-like eyes, mounted on the most inventive mechanism a Laguiole has ever carried: one tilt of the bee, and the painting starts to move.

Orange, coral and cream eyes glow across the midnight blue of the elder burl, while fine golden threads drift through the darker depths of the Golden Matter carbon. Along the stainless liners, filed arcs and points repeat in a steady rhythm from one end to the other. Under the thumb, the finely worked bee marks the spot where every opening starts and every closing ends.

Description

This burl deserves a slow look. Start with the blue, deep and nocturnal, spreading across the handle like the sky just before a storm breaks. Then come the eyes: knots that opened up as the elder grew, haloed in orange, coral and cream, scattered without any obvious plan, and yet not one of them looks out of place. Think of a campfire seen from far off at night, or a scatter of fallen stars. Across the metal line, the Golden Matter plays it cool, its golden threads in a deeper black quietly repeating the elder’s display in a lower key.

The frame carrying this picture is anything but a neutral backdrop. With its sharp angles, cut facets and faceted blade, it wears the boldest, most modern silhouette Laguiole en Aubrac offers, the one that broke away from two centuries of curves. The modernity ends with the design, though. The making stays entirely traditional, from hand assembly and file-worked guilloché to adjustments measured in tenths of a millimeter, with one cutler carrying it through from the opening file strokes to the closing polish.

And then comes the movement you will not find anywhere else: tilting the bee to set the blade free and feeling it rise toward your hand. This mechanism came out of the Laguiole en Aubrac workshops themselves, and it won the Bee Back the IWA Knife Award 2023 first prize for Innovation, the top honor in its category at the world’s biggest cutlery show, held in Nuremberg. This example wears it in colors all its own that will never be duplicated: a stormy sky full of ember-bright eyes, locked by a bee and waiting for a hand to open it.

Multicolor Elder Burl

Elder burl develops inside swellings on the trunk, where twisted grain wraps itself around the knots. On this piece the knots have become the main attraction: each one has bloomed into an eye framed in orange, coral or cream, set against midnight blue and scattered like stars. The palette is the work of vacuum stabilization, which carries resin through the whole burl; natural elder sits somewhere between cream and light beige. The wood gains hardness, density and a stability nothing disturbs.

Smooth and solid under the fingers and indifferent to moisture, it offers a picture nobody else will ever own: those eyes opened once, for this handle alone.

Golden Matter Carbon Fiber

Reserved for high-end knives, Golden Matter carbon is easy to spot: golden threads run through the dark weave of the composite, set during molding in movements nobody controls. The result pairs a rich golden glow with everything technical carbon does best, being stiffer and lighter than any natural material and unaffected by climate.

At the back end of the handle, under the bee that runs the mechanism, it adds a calm depth that leaves the spotlight to the elder while fully deserving some of its own.

This Bee Back unites three rarities on a piece that will only ever exist once: a sky painted by the wood itself, golden threads drawn out by modern technology, and a movement the profession chose to honor.