A role forged from scratch for B.fabers
B.fabers was built on one conviction: the model would only hold if the right people believed in it, and made themselves equal to it. Someone was needed who could bridge the singular vision of a designer like Huub Ubbens and the concrete reality of the ateliers. Someone rooted in years spent at the bench, but also able to translate a creative intuition into rigorous working drawings.
Gilles Malhaize is that person. Ten years with the Compagnons, including a spell in England, then seven years in a design office serving the luxury industry: that rare path already says a great deal. But what convinced us was not the CV: it was the stance.
Gilles came into the project well before Huub's first drawing. For close to six months, with Victor (Kinoko joinery), he co-led a research phase whose stakes were structural: to establish that a collective of independent artisans could genuinely work together, deliver quality and sustain a model. It is that phase, invisible in the final result, which made everything else possible.
Gilles has the precious ability to stay open where the expert is often tempted to shut things down. He takes on the challenge set by a demanding designer, turns it over, revises his work, and the designer in return opens up to his rigour, his questions, his convictions. It is a true dialogue. Talent often comes down to this: not competence alone, but the capacity to keep doubting, not to be frozen by what one already knows.
His involvement, total from the first exchange, says the rest. He subscribes to the vision, we admire what he does: it is on that mutual respect that B.fabers is built, one partner at a time.
Testimony
Gilles Malhaize, B-bois
What follows is a personal account from Gilles, in the first person.
Why work with B.fabers?
For a profile like mine, taking part in the B.fabers adventure is a tremendous intellectual stimulation. It is the chance to work on exceptional solid-wood furniture, where every technical detail becomes an absorbing challenge. But beyond the drawing, it is a meeting of values, a shared vision and a story of trust.
B.fabers was born of the wish to build a sound and responsible model: to design high-end furniture while respecting the material, sourcing solely local wood from our own regions and relying on an ecosystem of independent artisans.
Having myself spent many years in the atelier and on site before devoting myself to the design office, I have an overall view of the realities of this trade. With that double culture of the bench and of design, it felt natural to open up my network to help lay the first stones of this collective. That is how Menuiserie Gesserand and Malt & Bois came into the loop to shape the first prototypes. But this is only a beginning: this network of trusted professionals is meant to widen with future collections, so as to keep growing this community of know-how.
Putting that feel for the field and that living network at the service of a local, considered approach means taking part in another way of designing: more human, more virtuous and deeply collaborative.
1. Technical adaptation: respecting the drawing and the material
The project began with a very fluid and enriching dialogue with Huub Ubbens. Starting from his 3D intent files, the technical drawing work consisted in building in every physical reality tied to wood as a material.
Without ever distorting the original design, the models had to be adapted to the commercial thicknesses of homegrown timber, sliding systems entirely in wood had to be devised, and the essential matter of the material's movement had to be built in. Through constant, absorbing exchanges with Huub, we found the best compromises to satisfy both the aesthetic demands of the design and the structural constraints of solid wood.
2. Prototyping: testing the engineering against reality
Once the first study phase was approved, I produced the working drawings for prototyping. Made by Gaëtan (Menuiserie Gesserand) and the Malt & Bois atelier, these first pieces served as genuine tests under real conditions.
Although the physical making took place directly in their ateliers, I followed it continuously through the drawings and regular support by telephone. That is the strength of this stage: confronting the drawing with the reality of the object in the hand. Having seen and tested these first models as they came out of the atelier, the team chose to develop certain aesthetic or structural aspects in order to perfect each piece.
3. Making the samples: giving substance to the designer's vision
Preparing a collection also touches on texture and finishes. It was Huub Ubbens who rigorously selected the woods and finishes, in direct relation to the fine line of his furniture.
At this stage, my role alongside Gaëtan was to physically make the samples and to bring our technical eye to bear, so as to obtain exactly the visual result and the feel expected. That exploratory work is in fact ongoing: we continue to research and test new finishes in order to widen the collection and meet Huub's requirements precisely.
4. An open design, in continuous improvement
After final adjustments with the designer, the collection's drawings were « finalised » so the furniture could be exhibited in Paris.
I put that word in quotation marks deliberately, because in an open, living ecosystem such as this one, the drawing must keep its flexibility. The drawings will remain adaptable if the field and the exchange with future artisans in the network call for it, in an approach of continuous improvement serving French fine making.
Article originally published on b-bois.com. Read the original article →
From Huub's first sketch through to the pieces shown at Wilde, what this collaboration tells us is the strength of a model in which no one is backstage. Gilles, the artisans, the designer: they move forward together, with equal standing.
That is B.fabers: not a brand that subcontracts its making, but a collective where each skill feeds the others. This role did not exist before B.fabers: it had to be forged. Gilles is the one who embodies it, the invisible architect of the collection, whose authenticity as much as his expertise makes the quality of what he brings.
What comes next is already being written.