Membership of Maison Auvelle is not offered publicly. The house does not accept applications, and has not done since the year of its founding. The conditions on which membership is extended are conditions the Maison reserves to itself, and are not the subject of published criteria.
New members come to the house through introduction by a current member, and are accepted, where they are accepted, at the discretion of the Maison Director, in consultation with the partners. The decision is taken without recourse and is not, by convention, explained. The house grows, by this method, slowly, and the membership remains small.
The relationship between a member and the Maison is intended, from the outset, to last decades. We expect to know our members across the long horizons of their lives — through changes of residence, shifts in family, the slow rearrangements of fortune and circumstance — and we conduct ourselves accordingly. The annual arrangements are, in this view, of secondary importance.
The reader who is interested in the spirit in which introductions are made will find a fuller account in the essay set out below.