It all began long before Maison Hagane existed.
We were three friends. One from Spain and two from France.
We have known each other since we were children and, for many years, something happened every summer: we would meet on the beaches of Spain, spend weeks together, wander around the same places and, almost inevitably, end up in front of the window of a small shop that seemed to belong to another age.
Inside there were suits of armour, swords, katanas, daggers, helmets, shields and all kinds of objects that, to us, had something magical about them.
We didn’t need to buy them.
Just looking at them was enough.
We could spend hours imagining who had carried that sword, which battle that warrior had fought in, or which samurai might have wielded a katana like that one.
Of course, we were children and our imagination probably exaggerated things quite a lot.
But that shop achieved something important:
it made us look at History in a different way.
Not as a series of dates and names in a book, but as something you could touch, admire and, in a way, carry with you.
Then the years went by.
Life did what life usually does.
Studies, jobs, families, travels, moves, responsibilities...
For a while we stopped talking about those swords and suits of armour.
Or so it seemed.
Because some passions don’t disappear.
They simply wait.
Twenty years later, the three of us still had the same curiosity.
We still walked into museums and looked at the swords first.
We still stopped in front of a suit of armour.
We still argued about which sword was the most interesting.
And we still had that strange habit of asking ourselves:
“How on earth did they make this?”
That was when we started looking for answers.
And we discovered that behind every piece there was a whole world.
Blacksmiths, craftsmen, manufacturers, distributors, collectors, restorers and people who had spent decades devoted to objects we had first admired as children.
And, above all, we discovered that the people who work in this field often have stories as fascinating as the objects themselves.
Stories you won’t find in catalogues
One of our favourites was told to us by a former distributor who worked between Spain and France.
Back then, Europe’s borders were a very different reality, and international transport meant customs formalities that seem almost prehistoric today.
He told us that, on certain trips, everything had to be timed to the minute.
Load ready.
Paperwork checked.
Lorry on the road.
And a deadline that could not be missed.
The story always ended the same way:
“At half past eleven at night we were still in Spain. And we had to reach the border before midnight.”
So off went the lorry, down the road, while someone kept looking at the clock.
It wasn’t a film car chase.
But, the way he told it, it wasn’t far off.
The reason was the famous TIR and the customs procedures of the time. If you didn’t make it on time, the trip could become considerably more complicated.
Today it makes us smile.
But it also reminds us of something we have learned over the years:
behind every object there are people, journeys, businesses, difficulties and many stories that never make it onto a product page.
That is how an idea was born.
After so many years collecting stories, photographs, references, conversations and, of course, far too many arguments about swords...
we thought it would be absurd to keep it all to ourselves.
And so Maison Hagane was born.
“Hagane” is a Japanese word related to steel.
And it seemed like the perfect name.
Because steel is only part of what interests us.
What is truly fascinating is everything around it.
The people who work it.
The cultures that use it.
The eras it represents.
The stories it has been part of.
And the imagination it is still able to spark.
So why a shop?
Because, in the end, that little shop we used to look at as children had something we wanted to keep.
The ability to make someone stop in front of a piece and wonder:
“What’s the story behind this?”
Maison Hagane was born with that same intention.
We want to bring together in one place pieces linked to Japanese culture, the medieval world, the Templars, military history, and also those legends and characters from popular culture that have managed to stand the test of time.
But we don’t want to just sell objects.
We want to tell what lies behind them.
Explain their context.
Talk about the people who make them.
Uncover techniques, traditions and curiosities.
And, whenever we come across a good story, share it.
Because some stories deserve to be told.
Three friends. Two countries. A passion that began more than twenty years ago.
We don’t know exactly what those three children were thinking as they stared at that shop window.
We probably imagined too many battles.
We probably mixed up one era with another.
And we certainly believed that one day we would find a sword hidden in a castle.
That last part hasn’t happened yet.
But twenty years later we are still looking at swords.
We are still asking questions.
We are still discovering new things.
And now we have decided to open that display case that, for so many years, stayed on the other side of the glass.
Welcome to Maison Hagane.
The story continues.