Today, I'm going to introduce you to a brand that will particularly appeal to a specific type of BonneGueule reader (including me): detail obsessives .
Are you the type to carefully inspect every item of clothing that passes through your hands, where you didn't pay attention before? To look at the fineness of the stitching on a collar? To count the number of stitches on 1 cm? Has this approach spread to other objects in your life? Do you find yourself "geeking out" to buy the smallest piece of furniture?
Now take a duo of men obsessed with the object in its broadest sense, maniacs in the slightest thing they touch and that enters their house.
Now imagine that they create a brand of timeless, refined and mixed accessories, in which their (your?) mania for detail can be fully expressed. That they push their obsession to the point of taking care of invisible details , those that only speak to other lovers of beautiful objects...
You get Le Gramme . An accessories brand that wants to play with elementary shapes, founded by Adrien and Erwan, two men who had a solid experience in design and manufacturing objects.
A philosophy above all
The first thing I notice in the Gramme offices is that the quality is palpable in every single object.
Erwan and Adrien. You will notice their taste for Common Project ! Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
Whether it's the Japanese paper clips purchased from USM modular shelves or the tray on which they bring me Japanese tea, absolutely EVERYTHING is thought out. Nothing was purchased carelessly.
Several iconic objects are hidden in this photo. Can you find them? Photo credit: Benoit Linéro
Adrien and Erwan are like the friends you ask for advice before buying the smallest beautiful and durable object for your interior, whether it's a sofa or a switch , because you know they've dug into the subject thoroughly before you.
By the way, for the record, they mainly dress in brands that are very popular with industrial designers: they only wear Common Projects. , Notify jeans, Sunspel sweaters, and Erwan is wearing an Arct'éryx Veilance parka. Only brands with a sober design, but with a lot of work in what you don't see at first glance. Exactly like theirs.
For example, the bracelet display stand is made of black marble... but not just any marble: "marquina" marble from Spain. It has the particularity of having a very deep black and beautiful white veins.
The logo is inspired by Mendeleev's periodic table of elements . The brand name is quite simple when you think about it:
- since they are very precise in machining, each object is designated by its mass,
- and given their obsession with basic, refined forms, the very essence of an object is ultimately its mass.
Hence "Le Gramme".
The object with which it all begins is a bracelet - a bangle to be exact - in polished silver, with a brushed interior.
Money: a material rich in potential
Adrien and Erwan love the nobility of this material, both beautiful and discreet, and its ability to develop a patina over time.
They mainly work with 925 thousandths silver : one of the highest grades, composed of 92.5% "pure" silver and 7.5% copper. This is what we call "sterling silver".
" Why not 100% silver?" you might ask. Or even so-called "Britannia" silver, at 958 thousandths? Simply because pure silver is too soft. , the bracelet would deform too easily.
Polished silver
When I took this ring in hand, Adrien described it to me as a simple object, of elementary form, but very complicated to make . It took them a whole year to perfect its shape.
The series of rushes with which it all began... Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
This bracelet is exactly 2mm thick, a good compromise between thinness and rigidity. Among the invisible details that should be noted:
- there is a slight chamfer inside, to avoid having too sharp an edge,
- At the ends of the ring, the right angles are worked to have a clean corner radius, but also "soft" so as not to scratch the wearer's skin. Except that if the corner radius is too rounded, the angle itself is visually too "soft". When I was talking to you about obsession with detail...
- four punches are rigorously aligned:
- the head of Minerva, which is a state hallmark (applied by customs) guaranteeing the precious metal content,
- the denomination 925, for the silver titration,
- the Le Gramme punch, for the logo (all the same!)
- and the goldsmith's hallmark, with his signature.
All the hallmarks visible! They can also be inside the bracelets. Photo credit: Ludovic Parisot
Methods combining technology and dexterity
Polishing silver requires a mixture of manual, dexterity, and machine operations:
Behind the scenes. Polishing treatment in progress. | Polishing in progress. | #craftmanship #sterlingsilver #bracelet #craft #polished #legramme #bts #madeinfrance
I also notice brushed silver bands, a finish I love on watch straps. Adrien explains that a craftsman holds the strap in front of a roller, carving tiny grooves into the silver.
The difficulty is to correctly handle the jewel, so that the brushing is perfectly parallel with the edges. For this, the craftsman is helped by a guidance system on his machine.
So what to do after this?
Working silver in relief
We start with the bracelet with horizontal guilloche , where well-marked grooves run all the way. Finding the "step" of each groove was not easy: it was necessary to have an aesthetic result, while respecting certain proportions.
Horizontal guilloche, with a very industrial look. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
Then there is vertical guilloche, where the bracelet appears to be made of “notches”.
This ring seems to be made up of a multitude of notches. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
And my favorite: the pyramid-shaped guilloche bracelet. This time, they combined vertical and horizontal guilloche.
It was necessary to find the right length for the base of the pyramid, so as to perfectly align them in length and width. Example on this ring..
If you look closely, it is a set of very small pyramids over the entire upper surface. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
The rendering of the relief differs depending on the texture given to the metal.
As I said, I really like brushed silver because it breaks its "precious" side in favor of a more raw, richer aspect. Not to mention the "matte" silver, also very elegant, which is obtained by projecting silica powder on the bracelet by sandblasting it.
Matte silver... Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
And the same in polished silver. You see that the "feeling" is no longer the same at all. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
Colored money?
Next comes the superb black silver, obtained with a 5 micron layer of ruthenium, a dark metal.
Brushed black silver, splendid. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
The silver ribbons are dipped in a “ruthenium bath”. Galvanization then gives this dark tint to the silver.
The bracelet becomes more masculine. The opacity of the dark shade gives it a rather unique aura, especially if it is matte.
Pyramid guilloche bracelet, in matte black silver, the whole lot! The result is truly unique. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
A wide range
The versatility of a clean design
Each bracelet is available in several widths , and in several sizes, from XS to XL - something quite rare for an accessory brand.
According to Adrien, the advantage of an elementary shape is that it suits everyone. It made me think... Look how Charles Innocenti, a chef, wears it for example (you have a ton of other photos like this on their Instagram ).
Charles Innocenti unveiled his #mylegram on our website. He's wearing two LE GRAMME bracelets: Le 15g and le 33g, both slick polished in sterling silver. He talks about his way of wearing #legramme and what carries weight in his life. | "I like working in a team, I like the atmosphere we have, the way we help each other." | photographer @benoit_linero | #jewelry #jewelryformen #menstyle #menswear #charlesinnocenti #chef #chezlivio #paris #france #madeinfrance #sterlingsilver #bracelet
Whether the wearer is a lawyer, DJ, writer, student, accountant, restaurateur, consultant, I have no trouble imagining them with a sleek bangle on their wrist.
It is an object that is not "gendered", totally unisex, which we can project as easily onto the wrist of a man as that of a woman.
Jewelry made to be accumulated
When you combine colors, textures and reliefs, you get a wide choice of bracelets.
Le Gramme is a brand that is part of an "accumulative logic". Don't ask me why, but accumulation is a concept dear to some designers.
Among others, the Tokyo interior design agency " Super Potato " has made it its trademark. . She loves to create interiors with bottles or pieces of wood grouped together.
A typical interior designed by Super Potato, with a very visible accumulative logic!
Basically, if you are a fan of the brand and have the budget, you can wear several of them, of different widths and textures, on the same wrist.
Different sizes and widths on the same wrist. The accumulation offers an intriguing geometric result. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
The effect is very beautiful, both refined and rich. I, who was in favor of wearing very different bracelets, am reviewing my habits.
Here in a more "raw" version. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
The Gold Road
They then declined their collection with gold. I'm not particularly fond of gold accessories, but given the elementary and "raw" shape of these bracelets, I find the result tasteful and not at all "bling".
On gold, the matte effect looks great and "breaks" the overly precious side again. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
And most importantly, they created bracelets in... red gold.
Here is the brushed red gold. The almost coppery hue is intriguing. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
Before we talk about it and I explain how they did it, I would like to go back to the measurement of the purity of a precious metal. It's quite fun and it will be useful to you all your life...
What is a carat? And a thousandth?
It all starts with diamond cutters, who used the seeds of the carob tree to measure the weight of a diamond.
In fact, these have the particularity of being very regular and uniform in their mass. . Very practical for measuring the weight of diamonds over time...
The seeds of the carob tree, where it all began...
There is another theory, which comes from the word "quirat". It designates the commercial shares of a ship with several shipowners , which were divided into 24 "quirats". Hey, hey, doesn't that mean anything to you? The expression "24 carats"...
In short, the origin of the word "carat" is not clearly defined, and I invite you to read this high-level discussion for the more curious .
Yes yes, the word "quirat" is still used today!
We have therefore taken the unit of measurement of diamond cutters to apply it to precious metals, where a very pure material is called "24 carats". We have thus moved from the carat which measures a mass in gemology, to that which measures the purity of a metal...
In this case, it is very simple to understand: one carat corresponds to 1/24 of the mass of the alloy used. Pure gold is 24 carats, because there are 24 carats of gold in the 24 carats of the alloy used!
For 18 carat gold, there are 18 carats of pure gold in the 24 carats of the alloy mass , or 75% pure gold! The Wikipedia page is also very informative on this subject.
The correspondence between karat and % gold. Now you know what 12 carat gold plating means!
In France, since 1995, we have moved from carat to thousandths of a title to define the purity of precious metals.
But let's get back to the red gold of Gramme...
Red gold Le Gramme
So no, this is not red gold harvested in the Wild West. It is actually 24 carat gold, which is mixed with silver and copper. :
- 750 thousandths of 24 carat gold,
- with 210 thousandths of copper,
- and 40 thousandths of silver.
But why mix pure gold with other less precious metals? Is it to lower the price? Not really... In jewelry, it is important not to use 100% pure gold (or rather 99.999% ), simply because it is too malleable and would deform at the slightest shock .
I was saying! I find the red gold bracelets from Gramme magnificent . The effect is even more unique on the pyramid guilloche ring. The look is really different, without being feminine.
Timeless and atypical, it is matte red gold. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
After their lines of bracelets and rings, working gold and silver in several forms, I was impatient to see what they were going to release. And for once, I was surprised!
A line of atypical accessories
The precious ruler
If I say to you "timeless accessory, with an immediately understandable elementary form, which one takes pleasure in handling and looking at" , what do you think of? A knife? A spoon? A pen? A toothbrush? No, none of that!
Adrien and Erwan chose to work with silver... on a ruler! Yes, yes, a good old 16cm ruler!
I don't know who still needs to draw straight lines today, but the object is damn (and unnecessarily?) classy. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
Although I have difficulty understanding who the object is aimed at, other than a great architect/designer obsessed with the beauty of his material, it must be acknowledged that it is splendid, thanks to its surface which is both brushed and polished.
It's easy to see it as a terribly snobbish object, but afterwards I tell myself that it was no more so than a €500 handmade shirt or custom-made shoes.
The classiest ruler of your life, with a beautiful harmony between brushed and polished! Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
It's just that it's aimed at the most obsessive lovers of beautiful objects, who only want the very exclusive to sit on their desk.
They pushed luxury to offer it in three thicknesses: 43 grams, 83 grams and the imposing 209 grams which really packs a punch. . Not to mention the potential of passing such an object on to your children!
After the ruler, they looked at the key ring...
A silver key ring
Yes, yes, a silver key ring that, at first glance, consists of an ordinary metal plate.
But here too, the devil is in the details. I was fascinated to see how far one can push this obsessive side on a ring and a rectangular shape.
One of the three Le Gramme key rings, which will challenge your sensitivity to sobriety. Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
The ring appears simple at first glance except that, thanks to a system as simple as it is ingenious, the keys are very easy to place or remove.
Just apply pressure to "open" it and put your keys in. For reasons of robustness, it is made of 10 micron silver-plated steel.
As for the silver plate, it exists in three dimensions: 13g, 27g, and 41g.
The 41g, which is perhaps the most elegant key ring you will come across this year! Photo credit: Victoire Le Tarnec
For the dimensions, Adrien was inspired by the Fibonacci sequence:
- 27g is the "sum" of two aligned "13g",
- the 41g is the size of a 27g and a 13g placed side by side.
Don't hesitate to reread this sentence!
It is this figure well known to mathematicians that inspired the Le Gramme key ring. You had to think of it...
Adrien showed me his prototype key ring, which is patinating nicely. Obviously, it gradually loses its polished and shiny appearance, but that's what makes patina so interesting. In the end, the object acquires a matte effect that is... most beautiful.
In everyday use, this key ring develops a unique and "organic" patina, like Adrien's. Photo credit: Adrien Messié
I'm now very curious to see what other objects Le Gramme will explore, if only to see how they will apply their radicalism and obsession with elementary form elsewhere.
The question of price... and Black Friday
Now let's talk about prices.
I told you, the range is very wide, from silver to gold. The thinnest bracelet (7g) is €230 (it's Geoffrey's); the most expensive is the 4220, in 18 carat gold, at €4,220. In this price range, I want to say that there is something for everyone!
Obviously, if you just want a "truly accessory" accessory in your outfit, at the lowest price, this is not the brand for you.
On the other hand, if you tend to be hypnotized by the shine of a metal, the shape of the hands of your watch, the edge of your bracelet or the work of the architect Tadao Ando , and you know the value of this work of refinement with a beautiful material, then dig this brand.
Oh, and if you want to give it as a gift, know that the packaging is very, very neat.
Discover our brand new website with all our new objects on legramme.com | thanks to @beaubourg_bureau for the amazing job! | Check it out! | #legramme #website #beaubourg #menjewelry
And the good news that pleases: the brand never has sales but, this year, it decided to try Black Friday (that's why I absolutely wanted to publish this article this week).
They played the game well since everything is 40% off on the site!
It's time to treat yourself to a precious bracelet that will last you a lifetime ...
Article conditions: as a reminder, there is no affiliation, no sponsored article, no gift, no small arrangement, no exchange of good procedure behind this article. Just a brand that I wanted to share with you.
To learn more about jewelry, don't hesitate to (re)read:
- and our interview with Pauline , founder of Gemmyo jewelry.
