The story of Choeur de pierres
A legacy carved in stone
The Original Intuition
It all began in the 1950s with a defining encounter with stone. At just 14 years old, Roger Horcholle discovered the craft of stonecutting during the reconstruction of Beauvais Town Hall. Fascinated by the nobility and strength of this raw material, he sought out its origins, tracking it back to a quarry located in Bonneuil-en-Valois.
At 18, guided by an intuition that would shape his family's destiny, he settled at the foot of this very quarry to master every gesture of the trade.
The Birth of La Croix-Huyart
This passion was naturally passed down to his eldest son, Jean-François. In 1980, father and son joined forces to establish their own workshop. Meanwhile, they acquired a small plot of land at the edge of the woods and patiently began extracting stone using an old mechanical shovel.
Born of their sheer perseverance, this site would become the La Croix-Huyart quarry. For decades, Jean-François developed the quarry's operations and perfected the art of extraction. He later acquired a workshop in Saint-Pierre-Aigle, extending his extraction work to the traditional cutting and shaping of the stone.
The Gesture and the Legacy
Today, the third generation perpetuates this quest for excellence. Fabien, Benoît, and Gautier have chosen to return to the essentials to continue the story initiated by their father and grandfather. Blending contemporary technical standards with historical craftsmanship, they follow a single compass: the material, the gesture, the legacy.
Notre-Dame de Paris, the project of a lifetime
The original link
On April 15, 2019, Notre-Dame burns. As the world holds its breath, an invisible bond already links the building to the Horcholle family: for several months, the stones from La Croix-Huyart have been contributing to the cathedral’s restoration, and a new delivery was even scheduled for the day after the tragedy. Faced with the urgency of reconstruction, an unprecedented mobilisation is organised to bring this universal monument back to life.
The pursuit of excellence
Experts are immediately commissioned to identify the rare quarries capable of supplying material equal to the challenge. The different stone beds of La Croix-Huyart are subjected to rigorous analyses, guided by criteria of quality, strength, consistency and aesthetics.
At the end of these analyses, the quarry is officially selected by the Bureau de Recherches géologiques et minières (BRGM) to supply the site with hard stone.
A silent and eternal contribution
For a year and a half, 700 m³ of blocks are extracted with fervour to rebuild the cathedral’s vaults and parapet walls. This essential contribution to the monument’s rebirth sounds, for the Horcholle family, like the culmination of several generations of passion and work.
It is from this stone, extracted from the same geological strata as those used for the reconstruction of Notre-Dame, that the inspiration for Chœur de pierres was born. The idea? To give this history-laden stone a new presence—intimate and luminous—at the heart of our interiors.
From quarry to workshop: the metamorphosis
To bring this idea to life, Chœur de pierres combines raw material and design, drawing on the expertise of the centre of excellence Les Pierres de Paris, historically based in Saint-Pierre-Aigle.
This place extends the work of the quarry through that of the workshop. The monumental blocks extracted at La Croix-Huyart are transported there to be entrusted to the expert hands of artisan stonemasons. Under the direction of Gautier Horcholle, this know-how is passed on and reinvented. Using high-precision tools and traditional gestures, the stone is shaped, hollowed out and then refined by hand to reveal all its richness.
It is from this dialogue—between the quarry’s history, the expertise of Les Pierres de Paris and the creative boldness of Chœur de pierres—that our lighting is born. Conceived as objects of light, they give this history-laden stone a new presence, at once understated, timeless and deeply rooted in the material.
