Alerion will take you to a mytholigical dimension peopled with Hippogriphs and Pegasi, on dreamlike fantasy rides. The work processed on this unique piece revisits in a contemporary fashion the times when ornament and art were applied to utilitarian objects and when Hittite and Egyptian ash wood chariots rivalled in lightness and delicacy by commingling sculpted electrum and technical refinements to triumph on the battlefields or prevail on the Byzantine chariot-racing tracks.
Our bike, Alerion, was born from our encounter with sculptor Charles Boulnois, elected best craftsman in France and trained at École Boule. Like us, he was charmed by the surrounding landscape of the Vallée de la Loire region and has decided to settle only a rock’s throw from our designing workshop. When we visited his workshop for the first time, he was restoring an XVIIIth century Austrian finely crafted wooden trumeau. A few weeks later, he visited us in our workshop, and discovered another type of frameﾠ: a bike frame. The bare frame quickly prompted in him the idea of exploring its outline with a chisel.
The Alerion which emerged from that episode is the perfect combination of two approaches on woodﾠ: on the one hand, a technical and extreme approach, and on the other hand a more poetic and sensitive pursuit. They both revealed obviously consistent in this remarkably contemporary object. The bike has become a sculpture to be admired and — exquisite defiance — on which one sits.
Alerion was exhibited at the Institut des Métiers d’Art (National Crafts Institute, Paris), at the Musée des Arts et Métiers (Museum of Arts and Crafts – Paris) and at the Design Museum Gent, Ghent.
