Château LAGUIOLE Heritage Folding knife two bolsters Briar wood

The classic Laguiole silhouette, as a pocket knife

The Château LAGUIOLE® Heritage folding knife keeps the classic silhouette of the Laguiole knife: a curved 12 cm handle closed at each end by a stainless steel bolster (the bolster is the metal cap that finishes the handle and protects the blade pivot). Two bolsters, then, where the Signature folding knife carries only one. The house catalogue describes this shape as « emblematic and legendary », inherited from the Laguiole knife whose origins go back to the early 19th century. The back of the spring is guilloché, that is, chased with decorative engraving, and carries the forged bee, the emblem of the Laguiole knife. The blade pivots on a single liner (the liner is the steel plate that holds the mechanism inside the handle) and is held open or closed by the pressure of the spring. Every piece is assembled and polished by hand in the house's own workshop in Thiers, in the Puy-de-Dôme, then stamped with the Château LAGUIOLE® logo. Twenty-one references make up the range, that is seventeen handle materials: twelve woods, from pale boxwood to ironwood, three animal materials (black or blond buffalo horn, ram horn, white bone) and two composites (red, green or blue stamina, and mosaic pavement acrylic). Every scale of natural material is unique: neither figure nor shade repeats from one knife to the next. Text engraving is offered free of charge at checkout, and the knife ships in its box with the member card whose QR code activates the lifetime warranty. Woolly mammoth tusks come out of the Siberian permafrost, where they have lain for more than ten thousand years. Depending on how it is cut, the handle shows the cream ivory core, the outer bark stained by minerals in the ground, or the geometric plates of a molar: three faces of the same material, and no piece repeats. Heritage or Signature? Both Château LAGUIOLE® folding knives share the guilloché spring, the forged bee and the single liner. The Heritage carries two bolsters, one at each end of the handle, and a 12 cm handle: the classic Laguiole silhouette, the fuller of the two in the hand, from 150 to 204 €. The Signature has the top bolster only, an 11.3 cm handle and 78 g in the catalogue: a cleaner line, a lighter object, from 131 to 179 €. Do not confuse it either with the Heritage table knife, which does not fold and is sold in boxes of two, four or six, or with the Le Thiers® by Guy Vialis folding knife, from the house's other brand, made to the rules of the Confrérie du Couteau de Thiers, with a full handle, one or two bolsters, in 11 or 12 cm, with an optional corkscrew. Classic, Grand Cru and Melchior, for their part, are sommelier knives: corkscrews, not pocket knives. Château LAGUIOLE® was created in 1993 on the initiative of Guy Vialis, a French sommelier who wanted to turn a service tool into a work of art. After his death in 2016, LIGNE W, founded in 2008 by Sébastien Lézier, took over the brand at the end of 2017; since 2021 the umbrella brand Maison Château LAGUIOLE® has united Château LAGUIOLE®, LIGNE W and Guy Vialis. The knives are made in Thiers, in the Puy-de-Dôme, the French capital of cutlery, where every piece is assembled and polished by hand. The house is a partner of the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI) and of the Union de la Sommellerie Française, and devotes a collection to the ASI World's Best Sommeliers, from Shinya Tasaki (1995) to Raimonds Tomsons (2023). Every Heritage folding knife ships with its member card: its QR code registers the product and activates the lifetime warranty.