‘Confluence’ Collection

Design Lamps, Contemporary Sculptures and Bud Vases

The ceramic objects of the ‘Confluence’ Collection – lamps, sculptures and vases – are based on a research to understand and master the enamel, by pushing it to its limits and giving it new functions.

Outside the shard of clay, the enamel looks like glass and becomes a new material, almost independent, which drips and spreads, diffuses and connects. It can be structural by becoming a base or translucent to diffuse light. The two materials, clay and enamel, complement each other in an ideal exchange in which each expresses and connects to the other at their confluence.

Clay and glass, patience and fulgurance, opacity and transparency, fixed form and free form. My artistic process keeps questioning this concept of duality, looking for bridges that connect them. The ‘glassenamel’ (or ‘verrémail’ in French) that I developed embodies this connection, as an element to bring together forms, materials and time.

At the origin of my research, a key moment of observation: one day, I opened the kiln and I discovered on a vase this ‘defect’ that was to trigger my artistic journey. The enamel had dripped over the porcelain of the vase and had formed a small puddle on the kiln plate. What could have been disastrous turned out to be exceptional! Since then, I consider enamel as if it were glass, with a possible existence outside of a support.

Shaping clay is a long, patient and controlled work. This stage is similar to the action of nature, which erodes stones and minerals and creates stoneware. Natural glass, on the contrary, is obtained by rapid fusion, like obsidian created during volcanic eruptions or ‘fulgurites’ when lightning strikes the sand. With fulgurance and autonomy, the ‘glassenamel’ also takes on its full plastic dimension with the kiln’s heat.

Letting the enamel flow out of the support captures the moment of the glass’s liquid state and freezes it in its fluidity.