// BOXWOOD
// L. 18 x W. 5 x h. 3 CM

// SINGLE PIECE

There are popular traditions to which we pay little attention. Soft traditions that weave the ordinary of a daily life that we would like to be unique and exalted. Forced to stop, we had to ask ourselves: what are these essential values that unite us?

Barely a century ago, they were still taking shape, totally and naturally, in events of the ordinary. Engagements and weddings were the occasion of a joyful sociability where conviviality and aesthetic sense were expressed in a simplicity that we are struggling to find. The tradition of wedding spoons was in Brittany a custom as charming as artistic. Simple and patinated by use, the daily spoon had in each home a double elegant and elaborate, reserved for festivities and proudly displayed at banquets.

Until the 17th century, spoons and knives were the only individual pieces of cutlery on the table and, before the table and, before the fork replaced it, the spoon reigned supreme both on the plate and on the plate as well as on the stove. Symbol of the home par excellence, it was enough for a to offer one to his beloved for the engagement to be sealed. During the popular festivities, one brought with him his wedding spoon, an object of pride that the groom or the the bridegroom or groom had lovingly carved and engraved. The more affluent resorted to the services of a but the beautiful object was always at the center of the conviviality.

Remarkably, the spoon is with the knife, the oldest cutlery as well as the one which follows closely to the uses of the table. According to the time and the refinement that one carries to the and the refinement of the gastronomy, spoons and knives in Europe are diversified as much as possible. The epithets are expressed The epithets are naturally stated: butter knife, cheese knife, oyster knife, fruit knife, fish knife, etc. Yet the spoon is no less rich! Think of the coffee spoon, the soup spoon, the sprinkling spoon when its spoon the caviar, absinthe or olive spoon. This wealth of typologies, largely due to a 19th century that magnifies gastronomy, does not spare the working classes of society. This Breton spoon, beyond its symbolism testifies to this diversification of uses. On the occasion of an important event and convivial event, the unique character of the demonstration is illustrated until the refinement of the cutlery. The daily humility of simple utensils fades away for a few hours in favor of an exceptional workmanship. The object is a marker of uniqueness.

Our boxwood spoon, unique and finely carved, strangely echoes our contemporary upheavals. contemporary upheavals. Is this urgency to return to a reasoned and local manufacturing and consumption is it only the result of environmental constraints? Wouldn't we have the secret secret desire to find simplicity? What if the essential values were naturally within reach?

From our Tablaquin to this wedding spoon, the values of sharing and conviviality have crossed the centuries without difficulty. Wood as one of the first materials of the civilization endures as it is selected in its local species. Galerie Mica continues this secular tradition in modern creations which are as much quotations to the past art as well as praising simplicity.

Text by Marielle Brie

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