French artist Lucie Braillon, a.k.a. Missive to Bears, works with wood from her atelier in Normandie, “chip by chip,” she says. Her lovely shop is filled with exquisitely hand-carved jewelry and combs like the ones you see here—“eternal bouquets,” she calls them—as well as knives, daggers, and sheaths with adorned handles that she makes in collaboration with her blacksmith husband. These handles might feature plant arabesques, mythical animals, Scandinavian motifs, or Nordic runes. Really, anything you can imagine.
Her woodworking is not just a profession but a lifestyle, one that’s about slowing down and finding one’s rhythm, breath, and inspiration. “It’s reconnecting with the elements, with matter, with nature through a rigorous selection of my materials and precise gestures.” In fact, her lifestyle is close to that of a hobbit, she says, drawing multiple parallels that practically make us swoon. She and her husband inhabit a small house surrounded by forest and fields; their home is old, made of stone and wood, and has a wild vegetable garden, a beautiful fireplace, and is filled with “the smell of hot bread baking in the wood stove.” Her life, aesthetic, and work are all imbued with the fantastic worlds and fantasy that defined her childhood. At times she suspects she might actually be a hobbit: “Maybe I myself am a kind of underground being. In any case I feel connected to nature and am very sensitive to it. I respect it, and I try my best to protect it.”
See more of Lucie’s work at missive-to-bears.com or visit her on Instagram @missive_to_bears.
