TECHNIQUES
For Hand-Shaping my pieces, I particularly like the coil building, and slab building. But I can just as easily start from a clay ball by pinching. After a first bisque firing at low temperature, I apply carefully enamels elaborated in my workshop and the pieces are fired in my electric kiln at high temperature. For the lamps, I weld strings of LEDs together powered by thin electric wires. I install them in my porcelain tubes then I mount them on a tailor-made lamp holder / lamp cover.
Coil bulding
Most of my pieces are coil-build. This is an ancestral technique that I particularly like because it is basic, progressive and allows to carry out with great freedom forms infeasible on the potter's wheel, or slab-building. It is certainly the oldest technique in the world which requires almost no tools. The pieces obtained are full of curves and sinuosities.
Slab building
I work with clay slabs, cut, curved and put together. Assembling the piece looks more like an assembly of “prefabricated” pieces. The resulting volume has both controlled curves and marked angles.
Stamping
I sometimes start my pieces by stamping, this consists of pressing clay against a shape that I designed, or an existing obect I chose . Then I add some coils or slabs to finish the piece.
Ball or mass
I start my work from a piece of clay that I make into a ball and then transform it by pinching, digging it out or adding material to it.
Decor techniques
Clay is my basic material, sandstone in particular. Such as, I find it beautiful whether it is raw or fired. Also, it is essential, for me, to look at it with no other artifice. I want us to be able to apprehend it, touch it in its crude state. My pieces always reveal stoneware or porcelain whether they are smoked, engobed, enamelled at low or high temperatures. So that the dishes and dishes meet everyday use, I make my high temperature enamels using non-toxic fluxes and oxides.
Lighting
My pendant luminaires are hand made from three parts. For the supports, I use plates of stainless steel, steel, aluminum, or plexiglass. This list is not restrictive, I could absolutely use wood, or any other type of material. For the electrical part, I use very thin sheathed power wires, different types of LEDs and power drivers. I make the illuminated lampshades of porcelain or porcelain paper, translucent énd lively.