objet d'Art & de Collection...

Les grands Ateliers de France...

"Good craftsmanship is my passion in its great nobility, its fine completion, whether it is firmly rooted in modern times or attached to the past..."

                                                                                                              Baron Benjamin de Rothschild

Sand-blasted Glass Frosting and Engraving, Sculpture

With his mastership of traditional sand-blasting in engraving and in sculpture, he reveals the sensuality of the glass, an unrecognized sensuality, of which he explores the universe.

He creates waves or material effects. Whist writing words and texts by free hand … and sculptures, also … The decorative engraving – for walls and folding-screens, tables and consoles, luminaries and mirrors …. are asked from him by architects, interior architects and decorators, designers, for projects in Egypt, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia.

For France also, and the engraved plaques of the Hotel Regina Paris, facing the Louvre, are proofs of it – and here, restoration was also requested.

Above all, the artisan artist keeps the best for his creation, where he attacks directly, cutting the volume of a glass mass, « to explore the play of light in the heart of transparency », resulting in « sculpture-blocks » in which one can read « faces reflecting the soul ». Recently he has transposed this approach to marble. An art work, created through the use of artisan techniques.

Modern Frames, gilding, framing

Both together, she and he are creators of frames which are playing with subtle games of light and shadows, in a »dialogue with the material » - pigments and golds, mat and glossy.

By applying the techniques of water-gilding, learned and perfectioned during her twelve years of restoring frames in Florence and Paris, she is transposing « the memory of the ancient gestures » on the contemporary profiles, of which the volumes are designed and the forms realized by him. Profiles made of massif woods – oak, lime, cherry, walnut-wood …

Once the frame made, it will be submitted to the maximal protection rules, called « preventive conservation » : Anti-UV glass, acidless materials, neutral PH cartboard, starch glue …

Thus they have created a collection of « Vanities », size 30 cm x 30 cm with wide frames, various materials and golds to bring out a « mural installation »

Decoration Passementerie, Creation and Fabrication

Here is the last working passementerie atelier in Paris, and it has kept the century old

looms, the Jacquard loom, the hand loom, the “retord”…

They have kept the same hand techniques too, irreplaceable. To fabricate, custom-made and exclusively by orders from professionals, the passementeries which the decorators or the tapestry-maker would like, or which they draw to match them to a cloth, a style, an atmosphere.

Passementeries made of fibranne, even of silk, are demanding a precise look on the finesse of the work, the richness of the detail, the range of the know-how.

Jewels, High Jewellery Objects, Sculpture and Glyptic on Fines and Precious Stones

It is a tandem which marks the specificity of this atelier, which realizes unique objects for the Haute Jewellery : broches, engraved portraits, fans, clocks, desk elements … after the drawings entrusted to them.

They are above all two complementary personalities who combine harmoniously their know-how : one of the two artisans, specialized in precious objects and High Jewellery, after having achieved his studies at the « Ecole de la Chambre syndicale de la Joaillerie », is working mainly for the « Grandes Maisons de la place Vendôme ».

Glyptique is the pure field of his associate, engraver-sculptor artist on hard and fine stones, who has completed his formation at the « Ecole Boulle » by the « Beaux-Arts ».

Both are proud of passing on their know-how to the team of a dozen of artisans who work for them, knowing that these trades – engraving, setting, realization of  high jewellery objects, have to make a decent living for them.

Fine Cutlery : Creating and Restoring Rare Pieces

This couple  left the journalist trade for the cutler trade, about fifteen years ago, first in Thiers, then in Brittany. They were fascinated by the golden age of the fine French cutlery : the 18th century, for its creativity, its subtlety and its poetry, the 19th century for its ingenuity.

They are living a permanently renewed challenge : to rediscover the secrets of these invisible mechanisms, of a infinite delicacy, in the mythical closing knives.

At first, by devoting himself to understand them, then to reproduce them (this is His field), then  to dress them with the precise, or adapted refinement of the period : with silver, gold, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell (Her field). Thus they reproduce knives with evocative names : The Friend- or the Travel Knive, the Emigrant, the Grenadier of the Bastille, the Violin Case, the Fan…

Inspired by these models, they are creating, by order, like the Pilgrim, the English Fruiterer, the Golden Studded, the Diamond Point, the « à la Capucine » Knive … For a clientele of connoisseurs and collectors.

Fancy Article Maker, Inlayer, Ivory-Turner

When this artisan introduces himself, he begins with his cursus, and then, to the end, « Since 1989 I have the privilege to do a trade which I love, I am working on noble materials like wood, horn, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and this for the great names of jewellery, reputed antique dealers, and advised connoisseurs.

He learned cabinet-making and marqueterie, first at the « Ecole Boulle » in Paris, then through several instruction periods in famous inlayers’ ateliers. In 1997, he was hired by the cabinet-maker and inlayer Pierre Meyer, who initiated him into the art of making art objects with rare materials and taught him turning (rond, oval, and « figured », the most delicate), and milling.

When his master retired in 2001, he took over the atelier.

Their collaboration continued from 2004 to 2007 : when Pierre Meyer was appointed Maître d’Art in figured turning on ivory (in which he shows an unparalleled virtuosity), he chose our artisan as his pupil, to refine his technique in this exceptionally rare craft.

Sculptor, Inlayer :  Secret Cabinets, Unique Pieces

He advances on the path of a creator in permanent evolution, curious to explore precious materials, bold in facing the challenges of unique pieces, requested by collectors tracing him in his atelier-farm in Burgondy.

The originality of his imagination, associated with his reflection on the detail, have established, among the connoisseurs, his reputation of « maker of extraordinary objects ».

In  design decoration : luminaries, small precious cabinets, nest of tables, collection caskets, secret chests …

His formation was already eclectic : the « Ecole Boulle » and the Arts Deco. Cabinet-maker and inlayer at his beginning, he defines himself today as a sculptor – inlayer. To his inclination for rare woods, shagreen, mother-of-pearl… he has gradually added metal, then bronze, on which he works to make sculpture-objects, essentially in contemporary creation.

Gold- and Silversmith  -  Restoration,Reconstitution, Creation, Expertise

A gold- and silversmith like his father and grandfather before him, he works in the family atelier where each generation has increased the collection of tools, in this old mansion of the Marais.

His traditional period tools make it possible for him to use 18th century manufactoring methods and to accomplish technical feats of prowess, even in re-creating antique pieces such as the second candleholder of a pair which has been divided in the course of bequeathing them to heirs.

But today his priority is the creation of contemporary pieces –unique pieces or very limited series, magnifiscent in their purity, in sterling silver – spheres, oblique lines with aiguières, candleholders, amazing shapes which affirm his creativity.

Member of the National Chamber of Specialized Experts, Collection Clocks, Restorer on Mechanism of Precision

This son of a renowned clockmaker graduated of « l’Ecole d’Horlogerie de Paris » in 1966, well before the quartz period. Thus he got a theoretical and practical teaching which had not really changed since the 19th century.

This formation, helped by a well fitted workshop, predisposed him to the restoring of old clocks, and even to the reconstruction of incomplete or disappeared mechanisms. Without using certain modern tools, like the cleaning ultrasound tanks, which he considers as « very harmful for old metals ».

As well engraver in ground-etching, he is able to make decorated pieces, very frequent in the 17th and the 18th centuries. By extension, this atelier takes care of scientific instruments and portable sundials, planetaries, perpetual calendars, astronomical movements, mysterious small clocks, and chronometers…