The Mechanical Hand

THE MECHANICAL HAND A JEAN-MARC LAROCHE CREATION BLADE BY ROGER BERGH A knife capable of movement and gifted with intelligence... On fitting your hand into that of the knife, you already feel a strange clasping in suddenly the mechanical fingers close! You can’t get free! With the same movement, an eye opens and stares at you intensely. It’s awake! Now you are under its control, and the knife is master of you who dared to take it in your grasp... It was from the cinema of fantasy films that I drew my inspiration. It took me 12 years to implement my idea, six months to carry it out and a fair number of technical difficulties had to be overcome. Yet here it is! Like a cunning thing from another time, that a mad inventor out of the 19th century would have dreamed up. This biomechanical being activates its workings to move its fingers; it seizes control of the situation with its eye’s intelligence. The Hand is made with Bronze covered with silver and Gold. The Blade has been made by the Swedish knifemaker Roger Bergh, who has participated in this project. Indeed, I have been talking to Roger about it for 10 years and he has always been enthusiastic. Roger first forges Damascus steel to obtain various types of structures; he then assembles them into magnificent combinations. Jean-Marc Laroche