The birth of De Fil en Pétales came from the passing away of my mother,
Colette. Such an ironic statement when you come to think of it; birth
from death, escpecially coming from an obstetric-gynecologist!!! Correct,
I was not a business women and had very limited knowledge on the subject,
but I’ve embraced the curve ball that life has thrown at me, and like
most major scientific breakthroughs, for example penicilline or Viagra,
this came upon me by chance, pure luck…almost a mistake! I had not
envisioned anything like this at first. It’s an old family tradition of
ours’, a typical tradition in Québec, that at the passing away of a loved
one, roses that were placed on the coffin were kept and brought to nuns
who in turn used them to create rosaries with beads made of rose petals.
For my part, I still own the rose petal bead rosary from my grandfather’s
funeral, Léo, who passed away in 1975, as well as the one from my uncle
Yvan’s funeral who left us early in 2000. Needless to say how precious
these rosaries are and how much they unite our family as we each possess
a rosary from the same bouquet of roses which lay on their coffins.
My mother left me suddenly and without notice from a very rare and
unsuspecting complication after having suffered her first and very small
heart attack. She had never had any previous heart problems and was
physically quite active. Her heart muscle ruptured when passing a
treadmill test at the hospital and she literally collapsed and died in my
arms. I tried my hardest to bring her back. My friends and collegues who
were present also tried but failed to revive her. After her funeral in
2010, the search to find someone to transform her roses into rose petal
beads and make rosaries was more than a miracle as the art of crafting
rose petal beads has almost completely disappeared. Determined to not let
this ancestral tradition vanish from our collective memory, I set myself
to the task of finding how to transform rose petals into rose petal
beads. I kept on practicing and after many long hours of work and
numerous trials, I was able to reproduce rose petal beads of excellent
craftmanship and keep the tradition alive. As time went by, my friends
and I became better and better at it, perfecting the process, and just by
word of mouth, the news quickly spread. Soon thereafter, people from all
over were asking us to transform their roses too. What started out as a
personal endeavor quickly became a lot more than just a hobby. We were
becoming larger than life! I then decided to drive the project forward to
create jobs as well as to bring comfort to those in need by pushing the
boundaries of jewelry making to a whole other level; that of transforming
precious memories into jewelry with meaningful roses. De Fil en Petales
was born……..Thanks mom, Josée xxxx