Jeanne's birthday was a week away.
I had no plan — just a workshop full of tools and a block of walnut I'd been saving for the right moment. I knew she left her picks everywhere: the coffee table, the windowsill, the bottom of her bag. So I decided to make her a box. I sat down that evening and started cutting. I wasn't thinking about anything else — just getting the proportions right, making sure the lid fit the way I wanted, and finishing it before she woke up.
An Unexpected Beginning
Jeanne loved it. But what surprised us both was what happened next.
A few friends came over that weekend — mostly musicians, a few artists. The box passed from hand to hand around the table, and everyone wanted to know where it came from. When I said I'd made it, the room went quiet for a second. That particular kind of quiet — the kind that happens when people realize they're holding something real.
Three of them asked if I could make one for them.
That was how PickandCase began. No business plan, no pitch deck. Just a small wooden box that seemed to mean something, and a group of friends who recognized that.
Why Guitar Tonewoods
I studied sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. Jeanne graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and she's a guitarist. When we sat down to seriously think about materials, the answer came from her side of the conversation.
Walnut, cherry, maple, rosewood — these are the woods used to build guitars. Luthiers choose them for their acoustic properties, but also for the way they change over time: the texture they develop as they age, how they feel in your hands, what they look like after decades of use. A guitar made from good wood only gets better with time. The grain deepens. The surface takes on a warmth that's hard to replicate artificially.
That felt right for a pick case. Something that holds a guitarist's picks should come from the same family of materials as the instrument itself. It's a small detail — but in craft work, small details are usually the whole point.
Each wood has its own character. Walnut is dark and grounded, with a straight grain that holds engraving crisply. Cherry starts out light and slowly deepens into a rich reddish-brown — it's a wood that changes alongside you. Maple is pale and clean, almost architectural. Rosewood is dense and substantial; it feels serious in your hands.
We use these woods not because they're expensive, but because they're honest.
They behave predictably, they finish well by hand, and they last.
Every Piece Is Made for Someone
One of the first decisions we made — and one we've never reconsidered — is that we don't keep inventory.
Every piece is made after someone orders it. When you buy a pick case from us, I'm making that specific piece for you: selecting the wood, cutting it, shaping it, sanding it, finishing it, and engraving it if you've asked for that. The whole process takes time, and I think that time is part of what you're receiving.
A name engraved in walnut isn't a sticker or a print. It's carved into the surface. It's permanent. Thirty years from now, if that pick case is still sitting on someone's shelf — and I genuinely hope it will be — the engraving will still be there, as clear as the day it was made.
People sometimes ask why we don't stock more, scale up, ship faster. My answer is that the way we work is the product itself. Take away the handwork, the made-to-order process, the time — and you have something else entirely. Maybe something perfectly fine, but not this.
What We're Actually Making
Jeanne puts it this way: most guitar picks end up on the floor. They disappear into couch cushions, get forgotten in jacket pockets, get borrowed and never come back. A pick case doesn't change any of that.
But it says something. It says someone thought about you specifically. It says your playing is worth a little ceremony.
That's what I'm trying to make. Not just an object, but a gesture that lasts.
I still work the same way I did that first evening — by hand, slowly, paying attention. The tools have gotten better. The process has gotten more refined. But the intention hasn't changed: make something real, make it well, and make it for a specific person.
Come see what we make at pickandcase.com. Every piece is handcrafted to order, and most can be personalized with a name, a date, or a short phrase. If you have any questions about a custom order, just reach out — we read every message ourselves.
