FOR CLIENTS
Work to commission
The house works to commission. It does not produce a catalogue, does not sell to the casual visitor and does not make souvenirs.
Who commissions
- — Architecture and interior practices, for elements made to drawing and for cladding.
- — Restoration sites, for operations that require documented historical techniques.
- — Institutions and museums, for fittings, inscriptions, bindings and reproductions.
- — Collectors, for single pieces.
- — Art publishers, for limited editions and for bindings.
How a commission proceeds
- 1. Technical discussion. What is being asked for is established, with which materials and in what time. Commissions the house is unable to carry out at the level required are refused at this stage, and not afterwards.
- 2. Drawing and sample. A physical sample always precedes the piece, and is invoiced. It serves to bring client and workshop to agreement on a thing rather than on a description.
- 3. Execution. The master answers for the work; the apprentices work on it under his technical responsibility.
- 4. Delivery. With the record of operations and materials, which is also the document that makes a future restoration possible.
Times and prices
The times are those of manual work, and they do not compress: a dado of hand-cut zellij, a leather binding tooled in gold or a harness stitched with two needles take the weeks they take. Prices follow hours and materials, and are higher than those of an equivalent industrial product for the same reason.
The house prefers to say so first. A client looking for a saving will find better terms elsewhere, and a client looking for an operation that industry does not perform will find here the reason this school exists.
The third circle
Selling outside is also what disciplines the house better than any internal rule. A house that lets its work decline loses its clients long before it loses its reputation with the other houses, and no inspection achieves that result while no public grant survives it.