Our story

1890

In 1890, the Deleau family built a farm in Ramillies, in northern France. They did not buy it, they did not take it over: they built it. The date is still engraved in the old barn.

Five generations worked the land here. Wheat, corn, potatoes, beets. Cows in the cowshed, hens next door. The farm came through two wars without falling. Each time, someone took over.

In the fourth generation, Georges Edmond and Marie-Thérèse Deleau. In the fifth, their two sons: Georges and Pierre. The first is Agathe's father. The second would be the last to run the farm.

Agathe spent her childhood in this courtyard, at her grandparents' and then at her uncle's. Running after the cows, milking them, watching calves being born, collecting eggs: she spent all her free time here.

Up to the fifth generation.

Pierre

Pierre Deleau was the last one.

Born in Cambrai, a farmer since childhood. A man of the earth, in the most literal sense. Outside his farm, he loved two things: cycling and his garden.

And he tinkered. The whole farm bears the trace of it — buildings adapted over the years to repair, weld and reassemble farming tools. Here, we did not replace what we could remake.

In the family, when Pierre is mentioned, it is his voice that comes back first. Deep, gravelly, a little rough. It is the detail everyone cites before any other.

In 2024, he retired. No one in the family was in a position to take over the farm. For the first time since 1890, the farm came to a stop.

A night between Paris and Lille

That winter, Rémi was driving back from Paris. It was dark, the road was long, and he was thinking about the farm.

He had been working for fifteen years in retail and tech: Boulanger — in store, then on the website, then in central purchasing —, Acer, and finally Hisense, where he sold televisions to the major retailers. A good job, a good position. And an increasingly clear feeling of not being where he was meant to be.

He called Yann.

"It was dark, it was winter, and I was mulling over the farm. I called Yann, and everything started."

"Bro, your creations are incredible"

Yann Croain and Rémi met at middle school, in the seventh grade, in Linselles. They were twelve. That was twenty-four years ago.

Alongside his job, he cut pieces for himself, for pleasure, and showed them on social media. That is where the conversation started.

Yann thought he was mad.

Two months later, the project was launched. Three months after that conversation, he cut the first piece: a Polystone wall light in Saint-Maximin stone.

Today, Yann is in charge of production. Rémi, of sales. We signed a partners' agreement before starting — because a twenty-four-year friendship deserves better than a tacit understanding.

The stone

Why stone? Because Yann is a stonecutter. There is no other reason, and it is the best one.

What we hold against the lighting market is its lack of nobility. Too much plastic, too much of the same, too many objects you replace. We wanted pieces you do not replace.

The principle of the house comes down to three choices, in this order: first a stone, then a design, finally a size. Three styles — Tubular, Polystone, Raw —, two stones, and the same hand from one end of the range to the other. An interior can thus be entirely coherent without ever repeating itself. That is rare in decoration.

Yann chose our two stones for their texture, their relief, their shells and their tones.

Brétigny Fine Rock stone comes from Jardres, in the Vienne, in the heart of the Chauvigny basin. A Jurassic oolitic limestone, fine grain, off-white to beige.

Saint-Maximin stone comes from the Oise, sixty kilometres from Paris. It is one of the limestones found in Parisian monuments: cream, golden beige, luminous.

There is no quarry in the Cambrésis. Our stones make the journey to Ramillies, and it is a deliberate choice: we chose the material, not proximity. Our suppliers, for their part, are French — France Pierre and Rocamat.

A wall light weighs three kilos. A large floor lamp, about one hundred and fifty. When a block breaks while being cut, it does not go in the skip: it becomes a smaller piece.

The workshop

The workshop is set in the former cowshed, the one for the cows, with the henhouse next door. The feeding troughs are still there. So are Pierre's tools, and the period elements nobody has moved.

We restored the building ourselves, in autumn 2026. All of it.

In 2027, the former milking parlour will become a showroom. Visits will be by appointment: interior designers first, and individuals who think of their interior as a whole.

Visit the workshop — what the building was, what it has become, and how a piece is born.

La Maison Pierre

La Maison Pierre. Not "Pierre's house": La Maison Pierre.

Maison (house), for three reasons at once. The farm — the one you live in, the one you come back to. The family home. And the house in the sense understood by the craft trades: a workshop, a signature, a standard.

Pierre, for two. The material that Yann works. And the man who ran this farm until the end.

There is a third name, which does not appear on the sign but is there all the same: Georges, Pierre's brother, Agathe's father. This house is as much his.

The double meaning was intended from day one. When we announced it to the Deleau family, it moved them.

The farm now belongs to Agathe and her sister Charlotte, Pierre's two nieces. Our workshop is a tenant. It remains what it has always been: a Deleau farm. Simply, nothing is grown here anymore — stone is cut.

Durable, noble, singular objects, for demanding people.

Never plastic. Never all-metal.

And a piece that, the day you open the box, lives up to the expectation.