Puiforcat
Behind Puiforcat’s grand present belies a modest past; in 1820, brothers Émile and Joseph-Marie Puiforcat joined forces with their cousin, Jean-Baptiste Fuchs, to open a cutlery shop in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. Fast forward to 1902 and Louis-Victor Tabouret – the husband of Laure Puiforcat – assumed the helm, taking it from humble storefront to high-flying silversmith. Under his influence, dining rooms shone with sterling silver, capturing the history and glory of art de la table a la française. During the 1920s, creative control passed through Jean Puiforcat’s hands – the visionary behind collections with an Art Deco persuasion – before Hermès’ acquisition in 1993. Sterling silver is of the highest grade, which craftspeople in the Pantin-based workshop hammer, planish, spin, chase and engrave to reach the final, museum-worthy results.
Behind Puiforcat’s grand present belies a modest past; in 1820, brothers Émile and Joseph-Marie Puiforcat joined forces with their cousin, Jean-Baptiste Fuchs, to open a cutlery shop in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. Fast forward to 1902 and Louis-Victor Tabouret – the husband of Laure Puiforcat – assumed the helm, taking it from humble storefront to high-flying silversmith. Under his influence, dining rooms shone with sterling silver, capturing the history and glory of art de la table a la française. During the 1920s, creative control passed through Jean Puiforcat’s hands – the visionary behind collections with an Art Deco persuasion – before Hermès’ acquisition in 1993. Sterling silver is of the highest grade, which craftspeople in the Pantin-based workshop hammer, planish, spin, chase and engrave to reach the final, museum-worthy results.
Meet the Maker:
Puiforcat
Across more than two centuries, Puiforcat’s expert artisans have replicated, refined and reinvented the craft of silver flatware and functional home objets, and the maison’s Parisian workshop is where it all happens. Behind closed doors, a variety of silversmithing, adornment and finishing techniques are employed to create the polished pieces, including signatures unique to Puiforcat. These include an age-old hand-hammering process known as planishing, spinning silver on a lathe to shape rounded objects, brazing to add functional or aesthetic accoutrements, chasing and etching to decorate, and a multi-stage buffing procedure that creates a mirror-like finish. Under Jean Puiforcat’s early 20th-century tenure, Puiforcat underwent an Art Deco metamorphosis, and many prototypes from that era endure today. Constructing these geometric designs requires its own cache of techniques, like the ratchet method to form stepped decoration and the classical goldsmithing tactics that produce facets.
