“This new framework vibrates with the imperfect beauty of manual pruning”

“When I was 11, my father took me to see volunteers from Charpentiers Sans Frontières restore a tithe barn*. I was struck by the smell of oak tannins mixed with that of charcoal from the forge, the sound of the axes, the laughter of the craftsmen, the touch of the irregularities of the beams… I understood that it was the job I wanted to do and I spent my free time working with my father in the company he created in 2007.

After a BTS in wood construction which introduced me to structural calculations and a CAP to deepen my practice, I joined the family business. We still use traditional techniques, particularly ax squaring. We start from trees in the forest and transform them manually to obtain frames as our predecessors did. And while robots standardize the cutting of dry wood and waste material, with traditional tools, on the contrary, we follow the fiber of the still green wood, which will deform very little.

We thus provided a technical solution to the architects responsible for rebuilding Notre-Dame “identically” who did not have time to let the wood dry. They chose us to rebuild the medieval frames. Today, I am proud to see this new framework vibrate like that of the 13th century with the imperfect beauty that manual carving gives. We find, on its farms, the trace of the gesture of each carpenter who contributed!

In May 2023, at the age of 24, I took the reins of the Desmonts workshops and I see that this extraordinary project is already influencing other restorations of historic monuments. We have doubled our workforce, and I am happy to see that this know-how is being passed on again. »

* Before the Revolution, the clergy stored in these barns the tenth of the harvest received as tax, the tithe.