A Guide To American Wandlore

Violetta Beauvais

Violetta Beauvais (1852-1966) was one of the most influential wandmakers of the Southern wizarding community and the New Orleans style of wandmaking in the South, 

Violetta was born on March 23, 1852, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The only daughter of one of the most famous and wealthiest pure-blood families in New Orleans. Her father, Thomas, was a wealthy aristocrat in the New Orleans Wizarding community and later became an officer in the Confederacy during the Civil War making him one of the few officers of magical descent to serve in the Confederate Army and her mother was a well-known socialite who was famous for her jam made from Swamp Mayhaw. In 1862, her hometown of New Orleans was captured by the Union.  When Violetta was 10, she was accepted into Ilvermorny and was sorted into Thunderbird. In her first year in 1863, her beloved father was killed in action in the Siege Of Vicksburg. Violetta was deeply affected by her father's death and she would be given sanctuary at Ilvermorny for the duration of the war but she would not return home to New Orleans until 1897.

After graduation, she had taken up an interest in wand making and traveled across the South to study the many different styles of wandmaking there and learned that each style remains true to its region of origin. She thoroughly studied the older Charleston style of wand making, which dated back to the American Revolution, in South Carolina, where their wands are refined and genteel and have some of the most elegant casters in the country, then traveled to Texas, which featured a style mostly inspired the state's Mexican influences, emphasizing hard-working and fast-casting and oversized wands and then to the Appalachian Mountains, where the style there is very commonly seen in areas across the South and produces dragon feathers, and then to Florida, which featured a hybrid of tropical and Southern influences, to Savannah and finally to the Cajun Country where an older, more refined style was the most dominant form of and made in Louisiana and was inspired heavily by one of the most unique styles of music in the country: Cajun music. Violetta then brought all of her experience back home, where she came back to a much-changed New Orleans since the end of the Civil War.

By the 1910s, the city was thriving again and a new type of music was taking over the place: jazz. It had become the most cosmopolitan city in the United States. A new original style of wand making was in its genesis, pioneered by an inspiring young wandmaker by the name of Marie Laveau, who was known for using wands made from Bald Cypress, a wood capable of a wide variety of magic. Violetta later went into the Louisiana Bayou looking for a new potential core and she got it in an encounter with a Rougarou, a dark and violent creature from Cajun folklore, noting that the core had an affinity for the Dark Arts, as the creature itself was violent and used Swamp Mayhaw, which has never been used as a wand wood before. She stated that it was wood for those full of conflict, be it due to being at odds with themselves naturally, or due to past circumstances. The wands from the New Orleans style are noted for their adaptation to improvisation and are great for voodoo magic and were inspired by the growing popularity of jazz music. She opened up a new wand shop in the French Quarter and named it "Beauvais' Wands" which also sold Mayhaw jam made from the recipe by Violetta's mother. All of a sudden, her Swamp Mayhaw and Rougarou wands were now in high demand across the city and this caught the attention of Marie Laveau.

By the end of The Great War, New Orleans had become one of the most influential styles of wandmaking in the South and had begun to rival the much older Cajun style. 
She died of extreme old age in 1966.