When I saw the brakes that were available on Ebay I just stared and said, "Wow." At that moment Mitzi looked over and said, "Can I have those?" Alas her options were spend 6 weeks in Belgium or own some Rene Herse brakes . She chose Bruges. From some of my posts in the past some people might think that I don't believe Rene Herse was any more of a master framebuilder than any other bicycle craftsman. That couldn't be further than the truth.
Sure he was a great framebuilder, but there were builders before and after that are just as good and inventive. The thing about Herse that impresses me every time is his parts. There have been too few builders that have seen beyond the frame to everything that goes on it. Most builders build for parts that are available, Rene saw the bicycle as a whole and not just a sum of its parts. If he didn't like parts that were around he designed his own. Many builders have racks and stems for their frames but way to few have looked at the rest of the parts. There are other builders that looked at the bike as a complete system like Behringer and Morroni, but I can't think of any one else that ever went as far as Herse.
What I'm getting down to people talk a lot about his frames, but I feel people need to talk more about the parts he made for those bikes. So down to the questions: Who made his parts? Did he farm them out or make them in-house? What parts did he not "improve"? Why did he do it? Why did he feel he needed to "think outside of the box?" Anybody else on the list fell the same way I do?
enjoy,
Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
Santa Barbara, Calif.