L'Écrin Maison de Curiosités · Paris · est. MMXXII
L'Écrin cabinet with Mercedes-Benz 500K 1935

L'Écrin · Maison de Curiosités

established

Where the motor-car
becomes an heirloom.

Hand-built cabinets for scale automobiles and rare distillates.
Macassar ebony, Bohemian crystal, Brazilian onyx, twenty-three carat brass.

View the Collection Compose Your Cabinet

from €25,000 · workshop lead-time 14–22 weeks

Manifesto · No. I

We mount time
in a frame of ebony.

E

Each cabinet is born the way snuff-boxes once were — in the silence of a small workshop, where the perfume of Viennese shellac meets horsehair and beeswax. We are bookbinders of objects, joiners of small parade pieces. A single carcass takes longer to leave our hands than a Bugatti Type 57 once took to leave the Molsheim gate.

T

The L'Écrin manner is Baroque drama read in an undertone. The theatre of a Macassar plank, the golden silence of lacquered brass, optical crystal cast in Bohemia and ground by hand in the Rhineland. Restrained opulence — the only language in which a rare object addresses the man who has earned it.

E

Every piece is singular. A serial number is engraved upon the brass escutcheon — 001 and onward, singular for all time. The cabinet will outlive its commissioner, descend to his grandchildren, and the museum of the next century will arrive with an outstretched hand.

La Collection · MMXXVI

One form. Two states.

A single architectural form, in two readings of the body: closed, for the pure parade of the automobile alone, or glazed, to seat a small library of cognacs beside it under back-lit onyx. Each piece is made to commission. Veneer, hardware, engraving, dimensions: all are conversation. Prices are points of departure.

Cabinet Le Mans — Closed Body — for Mercedes-Benz 500K 1935
Cabinet Le Mans · Vitrine Close · h 1320 × w 820 × d 520 mm
I

Cabinet Le Mans · Closed

vitrine close · the closed-body cabinet, in its pure key

A parade vertical of solid Macassar ebony, lifted to the gloss of a Steinway grand by twenty-seven hand-rubbed coats of shellac. The body is closed — a single sculpted plinth of ebony — and the dome above is eight-millimetre Bohemian optical crystal, cast at Železný Brod and ground in Düsseldorf. Upon the facade, a brass cartouche engraved with the keeper's name and the collection's first year. The interior bed: Belgian silk mohair, the colour of Venetian night.

Here the motor-car is served, the way a Romanée-Conti is served.

Body
closed, solid Macassar ebony
Dome
optical crystal 8 mm, Bohemia
Bed
silk mohair, twelve shades to choose
Light
warm LED 2700K, dimmed

from €25,000

Cabinet Le Mans — Glazed Body — with onyx-lit cave
Cabinet Le Mans · Vitrine Vitrée · h 1380 × w 920 × d 560 mm
II

Cabinet Le Mans · Glazed

vitrine vitrée · the same form, opened to a small library of cognacs

A double idiom upon the very same architecture. Above, the scale automobile inside its crystal reliquary. Below, a small cellar behind smoke-topaz glass, lit by a back wall of Brazilian onyx «Mel» — honeyed, translucent, warmed from within. At seven of an evening the cabinet becomes a private stained-glass window, the way the sacristy window does at Saint-Étienne.

Three Baccarat «Harcourt» decanters fit precisely. Hennessy Paradis takes the centre.

Body
glazed, smoke-topaz door, push-to-open
Back wall
Brazilian onyx «Mel», 18 mm, lit
Shelves
mirrored crystal 10 mm, for decanters
Lock
magnetic, key-card included

from €38,500

L'Atelier · compose

Compose your cabinet.

Address two things first — the metal which dresses the carcass, and the profile of the crystal that protects the prize. The rest we shall settle in conversation.

Cabinet under composition — Cave à Cognacs in copper trim
I · Composition Cave à Cognacs
II · Facade material Macassar Ebony
III · Metal finish Polished Steel
IV · Crystal profile Standard 8 mm
V · Your composition à la maison
Cabinet
Le Mans · Cave à Cognacs
Facade
Macassar Ebony
Metal trim
Polished Steel
Crystal
Standard 8 mm
Interior
Brazilian onyx «Mel» · back-lit

L'Engraveur stamped this moment

L'ÉCRIN · PARIS LE MANS · CAVE À COGNACS POLISHED STEEL · STANDARD 8MM No. 001 · MMXXVI

Indicative price €25,000

Request this composition

Final tariff confirmed in writing after the first interview. Lead-time 14–22 weeks.

Provenance · the four matters

Four essences. One standard.

I

Macassar Ebony

The plank rests in our workshop for eight months — 18 °C, 52 % humidity — before any cutter touches it. The finish: twenty-seven coats of shellac, drawn by hand, each layer rubbed back with pumice and horsehair before the next.

II

Optical Crystal

Cast at the Železný Brod foundry in Bohemia and ground in Düsseldorf to an eight-millimetre clarity the equal of an ophthalmic lens. The edges are UV-bonded so closely the eye reads it as a single plane of crystal.

III

Brazilian Onyx

Only from the Belo Horizonte quarry. Each cabinet receives a single slab split into a book-match: the vein leaves the left side and returns in the right. Lit from behind, the stone becomes a small seventeenth-century stained glass.

IV

Brass & Chrome

Hardware is cast by a Paris founder who has served Maison Boucheron since 1973. Chrome is triple-cycle galvanic on 316L stainless. Brass receives 23.75-carat cold gilding on request — by the keeper's hand if he asks.

Commande · the process

From conversation to cartouche.

  1. I

    The Interview

    One hour. About the collection, about the room, about the model that will come to live behind the crystal. About the spirits that will stand alongside, and about the light that crosses your drawing-room floor at four in the afternoon.

  2. II

    The Folio

    Two weeks on, a folio of waxed card arrives by hand: three watercoloured drawings, swatches of veneer, lacquer test-cards, a sample of the silk bed, a passport of the brass. The folio is yours, whatever the outcome.

  3. III

    The Making

    Fourteen to twenty-two weeks in the workshop. Each stage is photographed and delivered to you in person. Monthly atelier visits, by your wish.

  4. IV

    The Installation

    Delivery by climate-controlled transport. Installation and lighting tuning on site, by a master of the house. Twenty-five-year guarantee on the carcass; a lifetime guarantee on the brass cartouche.

Atelier · contact

Request an interview.

Leave your name and a few words about your collection. Replies arrive by hand, signed, within two working days.

Electronic postatelier@lecrin.paris

Telephone+33 1 23 45 67 89

AddressRue Saint-Honoré 187 · Paris  ·  Bolshaya Nikitskaya 14 · Moscow