Some stories need to be tell twice to be believed. The one I’m about to tell you is still pretty unbelievable. : the day that we made the sword of the new academician Barbara Cassin.
A month ago, when Alexandre Frih & Thibault Lemaire came to us with that crazy project, we couldn’t imagine what we were going to experience. Their request was simple: do you want to work with us on the sword of the new academician Barbara Cassin? While at first we had a little trouble understanding what our role would be, it became clear when we heard the brief: Barbara wants a high-tech, lightsaber-inspired sword to impress her grandchildren, not a lethal one that is a bridge between the past and the future. “What? That’s fu****g really crazy, of course we’re in!”. And so it was the beginning of this epic story.
The sword was created by Barbara & Pierre Giner, and we executed the idea. The sword is made of a leather blade, pierced to let the light pass through a brushed optical fiber illuminating Barbara Cassin’s motto “plus d’une langue”, a “bleu Klein” guard contain the electronics and is surmounted by a Hittie statuette whose reproduction was made by the talented Eloi Gattet. The sword is as singular and brilliant as its futur owner.
Beyond the challenging technical performance, this sword has allowed us to work not on a product for small series or mass production as usual, but on a single object of inestimable value.
All along this adventure, we met plenty of exciting and passionate people until the consecration yesterday : the sword presentation ceremony in the caryatides room of the “musée du Louvre”. The illuminated faces in front of this sword, the curious gazes of the elderly, the envious ones of the children, and the crowd gathered trying to get their pictures with this incomparable object comforted us in what we thought: our decision to join the adventure has been obvious from the beginning.
Now it’s time to say thank you to all the incredible people we met : first to Barbara Cassin for offering us a ticket for a one lifetime opportunity experience, and for gathering around her all this clever and passionated people. Thank you to Alexandre Frih & Thibault Lemaire for their talent, their energy and for offered us the project. To Pierre Giner for his creative energy and for his communicative sympathy. To Anne Diatkine for her article in Libération, and for Florian Cellière, Kickmaker’s engineer who has successfully completed the project without counting his hours.
Thank you all, that’s rocks !
