A cobblestone in skating is a pain.

The story

Pavé Boards started with a fall. A loose cobblestone on rue de la Roquette, a jammed wheel, a broken wrist, and six weeks spent staring at the pavement wondering how that stone could be so ugly and so well laid at once.

The workshop opened in 2024 in forty square metres of the 11th arrondissement, between a luthier and a sewing machine repairer. The press takes up a third of the room. The rest is a table, a drying rack and a great deal of sawdust.

The idea fits in one sentence: press boards one at a time, and print on them what people send. No catalogue of patterns to pick from, no cosmetic customisation. Your file, our press, your name on the cartouche.

The process, in five steps

1. The wood arrives. Seven sheets of Canadian maple, cut to shape and stored for three weeks in dry conditions.
2. Gluing. Epoxy rolled on ply by ply, fibres crossed at ninety degrees.
3. Cold press. Twenty-four hours under eight tonnes. Concave and kick form in the mould.
4. Cutting and sanding. Routed to outline, edges sanded by hand through three successive grits.
5. Printing and varnish. Screen or digital, engraved cartouche, two coats of matt varnish.

The team

Léa Dubois, founder, press. Broke her wrist on rue de la Roquette. Opened the workshop six months later.

Malik Kherbache, printing and files. Screen printer by training. Answers the emails about files, often at too much length.

Sébastien Moro, finishing and assembly. Sands, varnishes, assembles. Known for laying a finish without a single bubble, by hand.

What we hold to

• Cold pressing even though it takes three times as long.
• Runs of sixty, never reprinted.
• The designer's name on the board, not only ours.