Detroit is a city of craft. Of carmakers and Carhartt. Of Motown Records and Eminem. Of iconic midcentury design (Isamu Noguchi’s Hart Plaza and Dodge Fountain, buildings by Mies van der Rohe and Minoru Yamasaki). Of the Cranbrook Academy of Art (in nearby Bloomfield Hills), the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Heidelberg Project. So it’s fitting that, following previous iterations in Copenhagen, last fall, and in Turin, Italy, last month, the French luxury house Hermès has headed here—to the suburb of Troy, specifically, where it also recently opened a store—to present its latest “Hermès in the Making” exhibition (through June 15). A playful, Willy Wonka factory–like presentation of the company’s know-how, the display offers “an opportunity to peek behind the curtain,” as Kamel Hamadou, one of the company’s expert silk scarf-makers, cheekily puts it. Poppy and pompy, it is a verifiable high-craft wonderland and a joy to behold. One would be hard-pressed not to smile while walking through it.

Divided into four sections—”A Culture of Traditional Craftsmanship,” “High-Quality Materials,” “The Talent of Our Regions,” and “Time, Our Ally”—the exhibition functions as a crash course on the Paris-based company, founded in 1837, and its 52 workshops and production sites across France (which employ nearly 6,000 craftspeople). At the “Printing the Silk” display, Hamadou guides viewers through the mesmerizing, nearly hour-long, step-by-step process of silk-screen printing, using a flatbed-screen technique that requires three years of training under a tutor to master. “It’s like cooking a family recipe,” Hamadou says of making an Hermès scarf. “A secret!” Beyond, stations feature artisans in saddle-stitching, porcelain painting, gemstone setting, glove-making, leather working, watchmaking, and leather repair. Throughout, various gadgets, gizmos, and displays delight, from phones featuring “after-sales anecdotes,” to leather odor diffusers, to a circa-1990 Volvo steering wheel covered in calf leather, to a Mars meteorite fragment found in North Africa (and used in the Hermès Arceau L’Heure De La Lune watch dial).