Sometimes just for fun we will take on a historical project - in this case we created a modern version of the bow tie pattern that the poet Charles Baudelaire (who was friends with Manet) made popular over a 100 years ago.
This project was inspired by Jonathan our customer from Sant Auban Sur L'ouveze in France who did the historical research for this bow tie which he used for his wedding - note he is very patient it took dozens of emails till we finished the pattern. His bow tie is the only modern version currently in existence.
We used archival photographs to create a modern version using a dark red Fermo Fossati satin silk from Como, Italy with our custom made brass adjustor. The original tie was probably created using silk from Lyon, France. Lyon is a beautiful city which still has some of its original silk looms in operation. My wife Noi (who is our production director) and I visited Lyon around 20 years ago and loved it. Hermes has a production facility in Lyon and they are very friendly to us; recently they introduced us to a small luxury silk weaver from Japan that makes very tightly woven silk which is wonderful for small designs, which until now has not woven for other tie makers. But we will save the currently unfolding story of our interaction with this weaver for another day...
Below is a photograph of the finished Baudelaire Bow Tie - the ends have two different shapes:
