North Carolina based wood-crafter and artist, Brian Fireman was originally trained in architecture; an interest fueled by the artist's fascination for building and constructing. After traveling the world as a young adult and visiting places such as Ecuador, Chile, India, and Nepal, Fireman returned to the United States and graduated in Architecture at Virginia Tech. He became intrigued with the tectonic nature of constructing, where nature and human forces combine to generate singular structures.

Through relentless experimentation, the artist learned about the diverse traditions of woodworking and joinery. A stint at a high-end residential architecture firm confirmed for Fireman that he needed a truly hands-on approach to both design and building.

He founded his own studio in 2003 in the mountains of western North Carolina. Since then, his work has been exhibited nationally and widely acclaimed by discerning collectors.

As the artist puts it: "Whether working with live-edge slabs or more sculptural forms, the intent is to allow the inherent beauty of the material to acquire a second life as a piece of furniture. Wood is a sensual material, and it is my hope that the work reflects my passion, awe, and respect for the trees from which it emanates."

Brian Fireman Collection

Brian Fireman

Founded in 2017 by gallerist Age Salajõe and designers Manuel Bañó and Héctor Esrawe, Mexico City-based design studio EWE is dedicated to fostering, further developing, and honoring Mexico's ongoing artistic and craftsmanship legacy.

Working closely with master-artisans and local ateliers, the collaborative studio has built a comprehensive catalog of contemporary design work anchored in cultural heritage through their concept, materiality, and craftsmanship details. Drawing inspiration from Mexico’s ancestral artistry dating as far back as 3,000 years, EWE and its craftsmen team research, experiment, and develop time-honored techniques with innovative technology. Each series of lights and furniture unfolds a design and craft narrative that brings light to untold stories and expands upon the depth and breadth of the region’s artistic patrimony and artistry. The resulting pieces act as portals between the past and the present, the physical and the conceptual.

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EWE Studio

Ceramicist Emelie Abrahamsson lives and works in Hönö, her native island in the Swedish archipelago. There, she has transformed her grandfather’s old boathouse into her ceramic studio, dedicating herself to her practice and the unwavering study of clay and its expressive possibilities. Today, Abrahamsson has built a cohesive body of work that highlights the soft nature of clay in its purest form. The sculptural nature of her work is defined by fluid, organic shapes of monumental scale and elegant simplicity, conveying the meditative quality of the landscape in which they are created.

Sought after by an international clientele of collectors, Abrahamsson’s pieces, with their seemingly effortless curves and seamless silhouettes, conceal hours of painstaking work and a true mastery of the malleable material.Whether on large or more intimate scales, the artist achieves impeccable forms and controlled texturing, utilizing the hand-building technique of coiling. She meticulously sculpts stoneware clay incrementally, showcasing her profound connection to the material. Each piece is a testament to her dedication to craftsmanship, with every curve and surface reflecting her artistic vision and tactile interaction with clay.

Rooted in the rich history and soulful traditions of the ceramic material, Abrahamsson’s work emanates a sense of quietude and timelessness, pure from any contemporary influence. Growing up in Hönö, she developed a deep curiosity about the land and ocean around her, which continues to inspire her work. Her innate sensibility and her tactile approach translate into pieces with both strong and soft personality that blend in their surroundings with a distinguished presence. Reflective of her philosophy and work ethos, Abrahamsson only produces a handful of pieces each year, embracing the time each takes to come to completion, embodying each vessel with a grounding sense of appreciation.

Emelie Abrahamsson

Maine based master stone carver and wood crafter, Ethan Stebbins explores the possibilities of the two mediums through the traditional sculpture techniques of subtraction with minimalist Japanese joinery to create organic forms that emphasize the material's inherent beauty.

Through their elegant simplicity, Stebbins’ sculptural pieces embody the master craftsmens painstaking work as well as his humility before the natural materials. Stebbins’ work is deeply informed by the ethos of traditional Japanese craftsmanship and by those of Japanese American furniture maker George Nakashima – “The purpose is usefulness with a lyric quality”.

Stebbins discovered his passion while training as a stonemason in 1997. He then pursued apprenticeships under master gardener Masahiko Seko and American master craftsman Chris Tanguay, honing his stonework.

Inspired by the natural landscape and surroundings of his studio in coastal Maine, Stebbins carefully selects tumbled stones from the rocky coast to hand-cut and chisel while emphasizing their natural surfaces. His work draws inspiration from the Japanese culture of appreciation and humility, as well as the Wabi-Sabi philosophy, with instinctual techniques that embrace the natural edge and textures of the material; the simple forms of his designs place the unworked, raw material at the center.

“My work mainly relies on paying close attention to the organic matter’s properties. One must appreciate the individual characteristics of a certain wood kind or a certain type of stone before shaping them and joining the two together. […] There is a rather special moment when you carve, a quiet, flashing moment when the natural character of the stone reveals itself. This moment is everything.” - Ethan Stebbins

In addition to his stonework and furniture design, Stebbins is a poet whose work has been widely published.

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Ethan Stebbins

Born in Milan in 1966, Gianluca Pacchioni discovered his life passion for art and metalsmithing when he moved to Paris in the nineties. There, he experimented and learned the techniques of sculpting, forging, and casting metals in a shared artists studio at the Quai de la Gare. His experiments resulted in his first collection of iron sculptures and furniture, exhibited at the Vivendi Gallery, Place des Vosges.

The artist then returned to his native Milan, opening his own studio in an eyedrops factory from the 1930s, working in tandem with Italian master craftsmen with whom he learned and honed his expertise. Pacchioni never ceases to explore new techniques and new materials. Today his work has matured into a virtuous fusion of brass, bronze, iron, stones layered with different patinas, and poured liquid metals.

In 2014, the Italian Embassy in Paris selected Pacchioni's work to embody Italy's ongoing heritage of master craftsmanship and art, with a permanent installation of his work in the Embassy's entrance hall. Subsequently, the Fondazione Cologni bestowed the title of 2016 Master of Arts & Crafts to the artist. Pacchioni says of his own work: "I abuse the metals, but then I end up caressing them... my aim is to find a form which blends imperfection with finesse."

Gianluca Pacchioni Collection

Gianluca Pacchioni

Hailing from a long lineage of wood experts, Moroccan artist Hamza Kadiri has honed his wood artistry from his workshop in Casablanca as well as his apprenticeships in Japan and travels around the world. With access to rare, precious wood kinds, Kadiri has created a body of work that reflects the artist’s reverence for wood, its properties, and its characteristics.

Sought after by international collectors, Kadiri’s highly sculptural, contemporary work embodies the artist’s mastery of marquetry and cabinetry. Inspired by mythology and classical art, Kadiri’s bold curves and textured surfaces magnify the material’s natural grains and patterns and the time-honored techniques involved.

Each piece of wood is meticulously chosen for its singularity, its essence, and inherent beauty. Today, Kadiri has developed a deeply personal visual language where the raw material, its nature, and personality dictate the shape and the skin of the ultimate piece.

Hamza Kadiri Collection

Hamza Kadiri

Born in Oran, Algeria in 1957, Paris-based sculptor Hervé Wahlen traces the impetus for his lifelong exploration of forms and metalsmithing techniques back to his first contact with copper in 1981. The self-taught master of engraving and hammering techniques has since built a significant body of work embodying his emotional response to the metal’s tactility. "I was immediately drawn to the material, to touch and handle the substance in my hands. I constantly attempt to transfer this emotion by creating sculptures that invite direct contact" describes the artist.

Wahlen’s initiation to metalsmithing materialized through dinanderie, a traditional copper-working technique perfected by medieval artisans in the Belgian manufacturing town of Dinant. The technique involves hammering, firing, and shaping a sheet of copper into a fluid three-dimensional object: a cauldron, a kettle, a pot. Wahlen then immersed himself in an ongoing exploration of labor-intensive metalcrafts. His decades-long study of the different metalsmithing techniques and strenuous aspiration for craftsmanship mastery led the earnest artist back to dinanderie and brought his work into the realm of fine art with exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world, including Barry Friedman, Ltd. in New York and the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain in Paris.

The result is an array of illusive organic forms with highly tactile skins patinated and buffed with beeswax. His pieces create a cohesive ensemble of works of elegant simplicity that combine a feminine sensuality through lissome forms and a masculine presence through weight and materiality. Often, their dark-skinned bodies open up to reveal an intricately hammered interior gilded in gold leaf. Also part of Wahlen’s artistic vocabulary is the rare, gravity-defying positions that the sculptor achieves through curvature and weight. This sense of balance resonates throughout the artist's versatile sculptures, which embody an elegant equilibrium between art and craft, interior and exterior, concealment and revelation, lightness and substance. Or as Wahlen states, between "my wisdom and my folly, my dreams and reality."

Herve Wahlen Collection

Herve Wahlen

Based in Mexico City, multidisciplinary artist Héctor Esrawe has built a comprehensive body of work spanning architecture and product design. Each of his pieces embodies Esrawe’s unwavering commitment to the significant craftsmanship and cultural heritage of his native country. Naturally drawn to sculptural and/or conceptual design, the artist’s signature editions is rooted in his appreciation for materials and artisanal processes and a particular interest in Mexico’s ancestral metalsmithing techniques.

Esrawe’s work is a contemporary tribute to the depth and breadth of his country’s cultural legacy, combining innovative and time-honored techniques, he reinterprets and imbues common forms with revisited purposes, artisanal processes, and recontextualized materials, shedding his personal light and perspective onto them.

Héctor Esrawe graduated from the Industrial Design department of the Universidad Iberoamericana, where he then taught as a professor. In 2003, he established his multidisciplinary studio in Mexico City, where he and his team of architects and designers continue to practice today. Additionally, Esrawe co-founded an open edition design studio named EWE Studio, MASA — a design gallery whose curatorial program focuses on fostering Mexico's local design and artistic creativity, and Mexico's glassmaking collective VISSIO. His work has been widely exhibited, including at Objective Gallery in China and New York, Collectional Gallery in the United Arab Emirates, and MASA Galería in Mexico. Today, the artist’s work belongs to significant collections around the world, both private and institutional, including the permanent collection of the High Museum of Atlanta.

Héctor Esrawe

Artist-ceramicist Jaume Roig (b. 1981 in Mallorca, Spain) lives and works on the Island of Mallorca off Eastern Spain. A second-generation ceramicist, Roig learned the craft from his mother while growing up in her studio. The artist has since developed his own vocabulary along with a growing body of work in both ceramic and painting. Roig’s sculptural vessels and organic shapes offer an intimate and modern take on the region’s ancestral ceramic tradition, its cultural heritage and artistic legacy.

Initially drawn to sculpture, Roig’s practice highlights figurative forms. His sculptural vessels and site-specific installations are inspired by ancient modes of expression dating back to cave paintings. Central to his artistic perspective is the notion of simplifying forms found in nature to their most essential core. In the natural surroundings of Ses Salines, in the south of Mallorca, Jaume finds the necessary elements for his work, be it the stones, the telluric landscapes, the faults of the sea, or the neutral colors.

The pared-down forms result from the artist's nearly 30 years of experimenting with the material. Little to no use of ceramicists’ tools or glazing highlights the integrity of the material and artisanal dexterity consistent throughout Roig’s body of work.

Jaume Roig Collection

Jaume Roig

French ceramicist Karen Swami's work has garnered the steady appreciation of international critics and collectors for its elegant simplicity and textured skins. Her nom d’artiste “Swami” is a phonetic adaptation of her maiden name, Souhami, and refers to a spiritual or religious teacher in Sanskrit. As for the inspirations behind her body of work, they range from ancient Egyptian Nagada vases to Japanese ceramic traditions to the work of her contemporary peers including Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Magdalene Odundo among others.

Working between Paris and Brittany, Swami has been drawn to the tactile and visual experience of clay since her early childhood. It was not until 2009 that she chose to dedicate her life to mastering ceramic techniques. In 2010 Swami received her certificate of professional competence in pottery. As she pursues her study of the material through ongoing experimentations at her studio, the artist has since developed an extensive body of work involving various time-honored techniques picked up from ceramic traditions from around the world. Swami embraces the beautiful and poetic imperfections resulting from controlled incidents and weaknesses inherent to the materials. Her work is deeply informed by the natural characteristics of the Earth; from the surface down to its deeper stratus. Swami mimics the parched, cracked and fractured textures found in nature, enabling and emphasizing injured, layered surfaces.

The particularity of her work results from the convergence of time-honored techniques from different parts of the world; the cobalt blue or celadon-green glazes reveal deep layers of nuanced colors and the simple shapes of her works are reminiscent of Asian and Hellenistic ceramics dating back to the ancient dynasties. To create her unique finish, Swami burnishes each piece with an agate stone, they are then bisque-fired, smoked, waxed, then re-worked often with Urushi lacquer and pure gold in the traditional Japanese Kintsugi technique.

Karen Swami Collection

Karen Swami

Born in 1960 in Cape Town, South African ceramicist Katherine Glenday discovered her vocation under the mentorship of leading ceramicist Marietjie van der Merwe. The artist has ever since pursued an unwavering path exploring the material’s wide range of expressive qualities while continuing to learn different time-honored techniques through ongoing collaboration with master ceramicists around the world.

Highly informed by visual arts, including both painting and drawing, her porcelain works explore the contrasts of emphasized organic textures on soft skin-like surfaces. Each of her pieces defies the materiality of the porcelain, stretching the matter to its thinnest; their translucent skin enthralls the natural light, while their silhouettes evoke the artist’s gesture as they quietly embody a movement. All whilst refining her technical dexterity and her artistic signature, Glenday has grown a cohesive body of work comprised of delicate vessels that accentuate the porcelain’s lightness and translucent quality.

Employing a variety of forming methods, most notably wheel throwing and occasionally slip casting, she sees the vessel as a circular canvas in movement. Inviting color and light in the pure matter, she introduces minerals and oxides often gleaned directly from the natural world, such as mud from the Niger River or clay from the Cedarburg, as her “paint.”

Although the formation of her work is often visceral and full of movement, the resulting pieces emanate a meditative quality.

Like autobiographical elements, many of Glenday’s works mainly result from the artist’s intuition with the subtle guidance of her skilled hands. More gestural and intentional, her most recent series have focused on exploring positive and negative space in porcelain, subtly echoing Franz Kline in his use of abstracted black “brush” strokes to create an interplay between light and dark.

Katherine Glenday

For over thirty years, Italian sculptor and designer Mauro Mori (b. 1965, Cremona, Italy) has built a cohesive body of work, including sculptures, both functional and non-functional, hand-carved in stone or wood or molded in metal. Using time-honored techniques to sculpt each of his pieces, the artist carves and sculpts work inspired by his extensive travels around the world as well as his interest in the natural environment and the timeless beauty of simple organic forms.

While he discovered his vocation when sculpting wood in the Seychelles island where he lives half of the year, Mori was trained as a traditional wood and stone artisan in his native Italy. The maturity of his work today reflects the artist’s ongoing research and explorations across mediums and sculpting techniques; from his earlier work hand-carved in wood and stone to his more recent pieces sculpted in metal or cast in bronze. Each of Mori's pieces is most often hand-molded by the artist himself in the material’s place of origin.

Mori’s sculptural, sensual, and textured silhouettes are informed by the very nature of their chosen material. His sensitivity to the medium's unrefined beauty and sensuality endows his work with a sense of appreciation for the material itself and its natural, original environment. The wood pieces are carved out of massive Albizia Rosa wood trunks sourced and sculpted by the artist in Seychelles, while the Carrara marble hand-picked by Mori in Northern Italy is carved in his studio in Milan.

From the traditional sculpture techniques of subtraction used by the artist for his wood and stone works to the painstaking form-shaping and hammering of his metal pieces, Mori never ceases to explore and further his craftsmanship expertise.

Today, his work belongs to significant collections around the world, both institutional and private, and has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the US and in Europe.

Mauro Mori Collection

Mauro Mori

Born in Osaka, Japan, Noe Kuremoto grew up between the mountains of Mount Ikoma and the pristine waters of Osaka Bay, a landscape that profoundly shaped her artistic sensibility. Working exclusively by hand, Kuremoto sculpts clay using traditional Japanese craftsmanship, creating figurative sculptures that speak to both her ancestry and contemporary daily life. Trained in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art in London, Kuremoto now works between the city of London and the forests of Lithuania.

Kuremoto's body of work centers on sculptural pieces that reinterpret ancient Japanese clay figurines through a contemporary lens. Her signature works—interpretations of traditional talismans like 'Haniwa', 'Dogu', and 'Toro'—embody the Japanese philosophical understanding of omnipresent spirits, particularly in nature. Each piece is meticulously handcrafted using elemental tools, resulting in works that balance child-like simplicity with sophisticated artistry. These sculptures, emerging from what she describes as "a deep ocean of childhood memories," serve as spiritual anchors, inviting the essence of nature into domestic spaces.

Noe Kuremoto

For over sixteen years, master French artisan Pascal Oudet has relentlessly honed time-honored wood crafting techniques. Working at the foot of the French Alps in Grenoble, each of his sculptures sprouts in the nearby forest where he meticulously selects segments of oak. The artist turns and sculpts the oak using a lathe, to reveal the inner structure of the material. The resulting works are one-of-a-kind objets d’art that accentuate the grain and translucency of the natural medium.

Oudet's delicate paper-thin wood pieces have garnered the recognition of international collectors and institutions alike. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the American Association of Woodturners, the French Woodturners Association, The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles and Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London. Three of his pieces are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. In 2012, the artist was awarded the prestigious “Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris” (City of Paris’ Contemporary Artisans Award).

“Inspired by the stories and personalities of weathered wood, I have created a body of work called The Sand Collection. Each piece consists of a thin lace-like wood form made out of carefully chosen oak wood. I use meticulous woodturning and sandblasting processes to peel the wood down to skin-like thinness. The transparency achieved is mesmerizing to me as it reveals the history and the beauty of the tree.” — Pascal Oudet

Pascal Oudet Collection

Pascal Oudet

Greek American multidisciplinary artist Peter Speliopoulos, born in Springfield, Massachusetts, lives and works between New York and Patmos, Greece. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Speliopoulos established an illustrious career spanning over three decades in high fashion and costume design for opera and modern ballet. His creative vision has influenced collections for renowned brands such as Christian Dior, Cerruti, and Donna Karan, while his costume designs have significantly contributed to the work of renowned directors and choreographers Karole Armitage and Luca Veggetti.

In any creative field or medium, Speliopoulos' work is rooted in the artist's passion for craftsmanship, organic material, and forms. For almost a decade, encouraged by the gallery, the artist has dedicated his creative exploration to the study of clay, stemming from a long-standing interest in the medium, its malleability, and tactile expressions. Since his inaugural exhibition Archaeos at Ateliers Courbet in September 2019, Speliopoulos has continued to evolve his ceramic practice, presenting solo exhibitions Chthonic in 2021 and Miteria in 2023. The artist is currently completing his fourth series, set to be unveiled in the winter of 2024.

Each vessel is wheel thrown and handworked by the artist in his New York studio. Beyond his studio practice, Speliopoulos is actively involved in philanthropy, serving on the boards of the International Folk Art Market Santa Fe, and Armitage Gone! Dance!, while also co-founding Fashion Centered, an annual event benefiting Manhattan's LGBT Center.

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Peter Speliopoulos

French sculptor Philippe Anthonioz (b. 1953) lives and works between Paris and Provence, in the countryside of France. There, the artist expands upon a significant body of work that encompasses both functional and nonfunctional sculptures. Each is an intimate expression of the artist, rooted in the nature and materiality of its medium. Swinging between plaster, bronze, and wood with virtuoso, Philippe’s work embodies the sculptor’s dexterity as much as his artistic sensibility.

The artist's vocation may have been influenced by his childhood with a family of artists and art enthusiasts. Philippe was raised by two parents who shared a deep interest in the arts with circles of friends that included some of the most critical artists and intellectuals of the 20th century in Paris.

Between 1972 and 1982, Philippe spent his formative years honing his craftsmanship mastery working as a carpenter, a period and a discipline for which he retains a special affinity. During those years, the artist extended the technical skills learned in carpentry to his personal work and artistic explorations. Philippe confides that he continues to approach a sculpture as a constructor, starting most of his pieces, whether abstract or figurative, from a constructivist perspective.

In 1982, Philippe was asked by fellow artist Diego Giacometti to join him at the studio. With both of his hands challenged by his health condition, the renowned sculptor worked closely with Philippe until his passing in 1985. During these years, Philippe became an extension of Diego Giacometti's hands, helping him fabricate most of the studio's works and fixtures conceptualized for the Musee Picasso commission in Paris.

With a longstanding interest for monumental sculptures and their relation to the fabric of public spaces, Philippe’s small wood or plaster pieces might conceal the artist’s vision for an enlarged iteration aimed to engage with the public in outdoor spaces. Yet to the eye of the appreciator, each of these models, whether sculpted in wood or plaster, represents an elegant work of art with both its intimate scale and its monumental idea.

“Philippe Anthonioz creates monumental sculptures, harmonious ensembles of independent abstract forms that playfully engage with the untouched nature and the radiant light of the outdoor space,”

 says French Art historian and biographer Pierre Daix 

“In his work, the artwork never imposes itself. Instead, it becomes an elegant appeal to the eye.”

In all scales, and either medium, Philippe’s work feels like an abstract poem written with textured materials in lieu of words, punctuated by forms in frozen movements. As an ensemble, the artist’s sculptures, both functional and non-functional, exemplify the depth and breadth of his artistic expression and unwavering dedication.

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Philippe Anthonioz

Born in Saint-Quentin, France, in 1958, Paris-based artist, painter, and designer Pierre Bonnefille has crafted an exceptional body of work that spans over three decades. Bridging the precision of his formal education at École Boulle and École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs de Paris with the poetic sensibility he developed through his travels, Bonnefille's multicultural experiences have profoundly shaped his artistic language. His wall creations and furniture pieces are contemporary expressions infused with natural inspirations, each embodying Bonnefille's unique approach to materials and colors.

Bonnefille's journey into the world of art and design began with his studies at École Boulle and École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, where he honed his skills and developed a passion for materials and colors. After graduating, he moved to Paris in 1985, where he began to explore his artistic expression through various mediums before focusing on painting and furniture design.

Working with natural pigments, mineral powders, and other raw materials, Bonnefille creates works that are deeply rooted in nature. In the early 1990s, Bonnefille created the large red fresco for Café Marly under the arcades of the Louvre, with the support of Olivier Gagnère and Yves Taralon. This pivotal project led to collaborations with renowned names in interior design and architecture, including Rena Dumas, Michel Boyer, Philippe Starck, and Christian Liaigre, among others.

Bonnefille was appointed Maître d'Art in 2010 by then French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand. In 2020, the Academy of Architecture awarded him the Médaille des Métiers d'Arts from the Paul Sédille Foundation, acknowledging his 35-year career as an artist-explorer. His Bronze Paintings series, inspired by light reflections on water, was presented in a solo exhibition at the Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet in 2021.

Pierre Bonnefille

New York-based, French metalsmith-designer Pierre Yves Guenec (b. 1990) builds a body of work rooted in his passion for craftsmanships, and his advocacy for the preservation of centuries-old artisanal traditions through contemporary design. Formally trained in blacksmithing, Guenec began his career as an apprentice in some of the most prestigious ateliers of France. His design vocabulary is deeply informed by his understanding of the materials and the craftsmanship techniques.

After receiving an academic education at the Ateliers de Sevres and the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the artist chose to take the road and develop his technical skills through a more hands-on experience, working as an apprentice with master-artisans and furniture makers around Europe.

In 2016, he joined the esteemed Ateliers Saint Jacques, a non-profit cooperative of master craftsmen and workshops located outside of Paris. There, the artist-artisan was able to master his metalsmithing skills working alongside the revered art founders of Fonderie de Coubertin for over six years, collaborating with international talents such as Mathieu Lehanneur, Noe Duchaufour-Lawrance, Konstantin Grcic, as well as architects including Peter Marino, Joseph Dirand, or Jean Nouvel.

In 2022, Pierre Yves Guenec established his creative studio between Paris and New York. With a multidisciplinary approach, the studio explores environments from a spiritual perspective, transfiguring materials to reveal their inherent beauty. From furniture design to interior architecture, Guenec applies a thoughtful methodology to examine uses and archetypes, emphasizing the permanence of objects, the impact of spaces, and the potency of symbols. Prioritizing the importance of fine craftsmanship, Guenec collaborates directly with master craftsmen. In natural alignment with the curatorial vision of Ateliers Courbet, Guenec's work bears the co-signature of both the artist and the craftsmen.

Pierre-Yves Guenec

Ukrainian artist, ceramicist, and architect Serhii Makhno has built an extensive body of work for over twenty years. Incepted in 2003 in Kyiv, Makhno’s studio has become a reflection of the breadth and depth of the artist’s multi-disciplinary approach. Today, Makhno Studio houses a ceramic workshop alongside the architecture and design studio.

Across mediums, Makhno’s work embodies the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic and philosophy that has been a longstanding pillar of inspiration to the artist. Makhno's series of lights exemplify his artistic sensitivity, whether small or monumental. Each features a highly textured, sculptural silhouette of organic shape that is hand-form by the artist and his team of ceramicists at the studio. 

Makhno creates timeless, contemporary works that are anchored in traditions, as he intertwines his Ukrainian cultural heritage with inspirations drawn from Nature.

Serhii Makhno Collection

Serhii Makhno

From his remote studio located in the serene countryside of Lake Shiga near Kyoto, Shuji Nakagawa carries on the fine wood crafting traditions of the region and time-honored techniques that were passed down from his ancestors. 

Hailing from a long lineage of marquetry masters, seventh-generation Nakagawa honed his craft under the mentoring of his father, Living National Treasure, Kiyotsugu Nakagawa, in Kyoto. Nakagawa has since built a comprehensive body of work of his own and established his personal practice in the serene countryside of Lake Shiga near Kyoto.

Though rooted in craftsmanship legacy and cultural heritage, Nakagawa's work breaks from tradition. Expanding upon the time-honored techniques that were passed down from his father, the artist taps into his individuality, voicing his artistic ideas through nonfunctional sculptural forms of larger scale. Created in 2023, this series was highlighted in the Kyoto Kyocera Museum exhibition 'Visionaries' curated by Noriko Kawakami last spring. From monumental sculptures to small objects of traditional functionality, Nakagawa’s pieces embody the artist’s deep respect for his organic medium — wood —, his artisanal dexterity, and the culture of humility that is shared among Japan’s master craftsmen.

His entire body of work highlights the essence and natural beauty of various local wood species. Often the artist chooses to work with Jindai-Sugi — a Japanese cedar sourced from Northern Japan's forests that symbolizes the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural world. Its weathered bark and intricate patterns evoke a sense of harmony where the passage of time is celebrated rather than feared.

The wood crafter explains the virtues of different wood species and why one may have been historically selected over another for certain purposes. “

Sawara cypress has a soft smell and the ability to absorb water well, that is why we usually use it for rice keepers. The Hinoki cypress, however, has a strong scent. It’s not suitable for food and drink containers. Instead, its medicinal virtues make it a good species to use for wooden bathtubs and other bathroom elements”

Nakagawa's wood pieces are sought after both for the remarkably soft surfaces he is able to achieve and for the seamless curves of their silhouettes. His work has been exhibited in museums across Japan and Europe and is part of significant private and institutional collections.

Shuji Nakagawa Mokkougei Collection

Shuji Nakagawa

Born in Goiânia, Brazil in 1962, Valéria Nascimento grew up surrounded by the exuberant Brazilian landscape that has deeply influenced her work and artistic sensibility. Initially trained as an architect, Nascimento moved to Rio after graduating in 1985, where she was introduced to clay. Fascinated by its malleability and the myriad expressions the medium offers, she shifted her career path a year later to pursue her artistic interests and experiment with ceramic techniques.

Today, Nascimento has developed a significant body of work, primarily composed of hand-modeled bisque porcelain installations. Her site-specific pieces represent a meticulously mapped ensemble of nature-inspired elements, individually hand-formed by the artist. Each resembles an ethereal mycelium landscape drawing from a confluence of inspirations rooted in the lust nature of her native environment and the urban fabrics she studied in architecture. The individual parts of her pieces are often inspired by botanical elements gathered from nature or collected from childhood memories. Whether framed on a panel or mounted directly onto walls or ceilings, her compositions are made up of organized clusters and sequences of hundreds of delicate organic shapes, whisper-thin petals, seeds, or blossom-like forms, all modeled one by one in her studio.


Since relocating to London in 1999, Nascimento’s work has become part of significant collections both private and public. She has created bespoke pieces for established institutions and public spaces such as the Rhodes Trust headquarters in Oxford, Chanel’s boutique in Paris, Skye Gyngall's Spring Restaurant in London's Somerset House, and Tiffany & Co. stores in London and Montreal. Her large-scale installations are part of the permanent designs of Boucheron’s boutiques across Europe, European cruise liners, and luxury hotels worldwide. Additionally, her work has been included in museum exhibitions at London's Victoria & Albert Museum and the Museo Historico Nacional in Río de Janeiro, Brazil.

Valéria Nascimento Collection

Valéria Nascimento

Based in Madrid, Verónica Mar creates functional sculptures inspired by nature. The organic lines of her pieces give homage to the essential beauty of nature through textures and materiality which emote in a natural way. All of her creations have their own soul, they express a duality inherent in everything that exists.

Mar has been working closely with local Spanish artisans whose expertise accompany the evolution of her pieces. The artist advocates for traditional craftsmanship as a key element to ecological sustainability and cultural harmony for its tactile experience and the cultural heritage behind it.

Since 2007 Veronica's designs have garnered international recognition from both private and institutional clients. Widely published in the press, her Autumn Leaf Swing and the Soul Sculpture Bench have received international design awards.

Verónica Mar

Yoyo Balagué was born and raised in Barcelona, Spain. Her formative years were spent in the Baix Empordà region of Catalonia, where the Mediterranean landscape profoundly influenced her artistic vision. Drawn to nature, its quietude and its inherent power since childhood, Balagué has built a comprehensive body of work that embodies and integrates the elemental forces of wood, fire, water, and air—both literally and conceptually.

Self-taught, the artist has worked with unwavering dedication, studying and experimenting with time-honored ceramic techniques gleaned from across the globe. As she mastered the ancient pit firing methods, Balagué has created a singular and innovative approach to this millennia-old tradition.

Based in Spain, the artist has developed a multidisciplinary practice that spans mediums and forms. Her body of work includes both functional and nonfunctional sculptures, which she often shapes using the traditional "Urbido" technique—a modeling method of coiling clay rolls to build up the structure of her forms. Rooted in her spiritual sensibility and profound connection to nature, Balagué approaches her creative process as a meditative ritual. Using her body as a vehicle that can connect with the spiritual nature of things, she channels a deep awareness of space and movement, working with a focus that emerges from inner stillness and quietude.

In line with the wabi-sabi philosophy and her attunement to the inherent, organic qualities of her medium, Balagué often embraces unglazed surfaces that celebrate imperfection. Her work finds poetry in the natural vulnerabilities of clay, accentuated by natural phenomena and marks left by the firing process—transforming perceived flaws into a testament to natural beauty and resilience.

Yoyo Balagué

Artist Collaborations

Adolf Loos was born on December 10, 1870 in Brünn (Brno), in the Margraviate of Moravia region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the eastern part of the Czech Republic. Son of a German stonemason and sculptor, Loos studied at the Technical University of Dresden in 1890-1893. He left for the United States before completing his study where he stayed for three years.

In 1896 Loos returned to Vienna. Inspired by his journey in the New World, he devoted himself to architecture. In 1898 he was associated briefly with the Vienna Secession. After serving in the First World War, Loos worked as chief architect of the Department of Housing of Vienna in the newly established Austrian Republic. He resigned, disillusioned, in 1922 and emigrated to France. Between 1922 and 1927 Loos lived mostly in Paris and the French Riviera; he returned to Austria in 1928 and lived there intermittently until his death on August 23, 1933.

Loos's interior designs, in which he used fine materials with polished surfaces uninterrupted by moldings, proved a potent inspiration to the architects of the next generation. In his free-standing houses Loos introduced the compact, block-like mass, although he did not subject it to the geometric rigor characteristic of the work of the Internationalists.

But it was in the design of interiors that Loos revealed himself as a first-class architect; the dignity and coziness of his interiors and their deliberate suitability to modern living conditions have rarely been surpassed. In these Loos focused the emphasis on precious materials and the creation of flowing spaces—very similar to those of Frank Lloyd Wright—and also the notion of Raumplan—that is, architectural composition with volumes of space as opposed to two-dimensional planning.

Adolf Loos Collection

Adolf Loos

Born in the Netherlands in 1971 to Dutch designers Gijs Bakker and Emmy Van Leersum, Bakker grew up in an environment infused with a strong aesthetic sensibility. Rather than a formal design education, he forged his own path by training as a silversmith. Bakker set up his own studio in 1994, later moving into furniture and product design.

Bakker is interested in organic forms and movements that defy time, zeitgeist, functionality, and purpose. Those who see Aldo’s design for the first time are often drawn to the form or the materiality before they wonder what their purpose is.

This engaging and intriguing moment is important to the designer who grew his own unconventional approach to design in the scholarly household of two Dutch design icons. As opposed to most designers, Bakker rarely starts a design idea from the desire to solve a problem or address practical needs. Most of his objects start from the fascination for the timeless beauty of a form and the movement it may suggest; the form and its movement would then inspire a function. The cleverness and oddity of Aldo’s designs give his objects some type of natural legitimacy and timelessness.

Bakker’s pieces result from the dexterity of his master craftsmen collaborators — silversmith Jan Matthesius, ceramicist Frans Ottink, woodcrafter Rutger Graas, urushi master Sergej Kirilov or metalsmith Andre van Loon among others.

Widely published and exhibited in Europe today, Aldo held his first large exhibition at the Amsterdam Gallery ‘Binnen’. Invited by Ilse Crawford of the Eindhoven Design Academy in 2002, Bakker has fulfilled a successful tenure at the Design university for over ten years. Today the designer continues selected collaborations with renown manufacturers while further completing his personal collection with master craftsmen and galleries around the world.

Aldo Bakker Collection

Aldo Bakker

London-based artist Alexandra Llewellyn has garnered worldwide attention and a word-to-mouth clientele for her collection of creative handcrafted backgammon sets and bespoke game pieces. Whether inspired by personal experience or commissioned by the client, Llewellyn’s designs are both games and objets d'art.

The seed was sown when Alexandra played backgammon as a child in Cairo. Her opponent was ten times her age and although they had nothing in common, they were able to communicate through their shared love of the game.

Her signature collection includes creative collaborations with icons such as Terry O’Neil, Alice Temperley and the estate of Milton H. Green. Alexandra’s bespoke pieces have been commissioned by collectors, design virtues and institutions around the world including British royalty, Sir Richard Branson, The Four Seasons group or Vogue Magazine among others.

“I am forever inspired by how games bring us together and the conversations that ensue. Time is now our greatest luxury and games create a space in which we can enjoy time with our loved ones” says Alexandra.

Alexandra creates her clients bespoke pieces together with each of them individually, defining the theme and the design based on conversations and / or memories they might share with the artist.

Alexandra’s work has been published and talked about in publications such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, How to Spend It, Robb Report, Harper Bazaar, AD, Time Luxx, Telegraph Luxury, Tatler, Country& Town House, and Homes and Gardens.

Alexandra Llewellyn Collection

Alexandra Llewellyn

A graduate of the University of the Arts London, German-born designer Bodo Sperlein opened his London-based studio in 2000. Originally specializing in ceramics, Sperlein has worked in collaboration with esteemed porcelain manufacturers around the world, including Dibbern in Germany, Lladró in Spain, and Nikko in Japan. He cemented his reputation creating collections for several Michelin-starred chefs and restaurants, such as The Ledbury, Five Fields, Yauatcha and Roppongi Terrace in Tokyo.

Each of his projects is a reflection of Sperlein’s engagement in supporting the cultural heritage and ethos inherent to traditional craftsmanship. He materializes this interest through the design and production of signature collections handcrafted by contemporary artisans using time-honored techniques various materials including wood, silver, and bone porcelain china.

Over the years, Sperlein’s repertoire has extended to include collaborations and commissions from porcelain and ceramics to interior accessories and lighting, often echoing his enthusiasm for rejuvenating heritage brands.

The designer has grown a distinct and cohesive vocabulary informed by his thorough appreciation and understanding of the material and his advocacy for master-craftsmanship.

Bodo Sperlein Collection

Bodo Sperlein

Dustin Yellin (B. 1975, California) is an artist who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the founder and director of Pioneer Works, a multidisciplinary cultural center in Red Hook, Brooklyn that builds community through the arts and sciences to create an open and inspired world. In tandem with his institution-building social practice, Yellin’s artwork makes the hidden forces of nature and commerce legible. Drawing on both modernism, and the sacral tradition of Hinterglas painting, Yellin primarily works through a unique form of 3-dimensional photomontage, in which paint and images clipped from various print media are embedded within laminated glass sheets to form grand pictographic allegories, which the artist calls “frozen cinema”.

Dustin Yellin Collection

Dustin Yellin

Born in Italy in 1917, Ettore Sottsass was an architect and designer known for his large oeuvre that includes furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting, and office design. Founder of the Memphis Group, a collective of designers who brought forth unprecedented designs marked by clashing forms, colors, and haphazard arrangements which have since had an outsized influence on contemporary design.

Drawing inspiration from such movements as Art Deco and Pop Art, Memphis produced and exhibited furniture and objects that were vibrant in color and futuristic in design. Sottsass’ own work was known for its variety, oftentimes incorporating playfulness through ornamentation and color. His Olivetti typewriter (1969), one of his most celebrated designs, made of bright red-orange plastic, was a Pop phenomenon in both its functionality and innovative design.

Ettore Sottsass Collection

Ettore Sottsass

Fy-shan Glass Studio located in Pera, Istanbul, was founded by glass artist Felekşan Onar in 2006 with the aim to design and produce limited-edition functional art, decorative objects and lighting. Periodically, Fy-shan Glass Studio introduces updated, innovative and contemporary collections that represent the artistic story behind its creation, coupled with excellent craftsmanship.

Initially showing interest in glass as a collector, Felekşan later received her formal education in glass-making at Glass Furnace, Istanbul in 2004. Fy-shan Glass Studio collections are inspired by a wide range of sources, and also benefit extensively from Felekşan’s artistic career as she continues to show her work not only in Turkey, but also in Berlin, Stockholm, Venice, and New York. Felekşan’s dedication and focus to glass and her expertise in several techniques including blowing, casting, fusing, lamp-working and cold-working coupled with professional assistance in product design, enhances the timeless creations of Fy-shan Glass Studio.

Feleksan Onar Collection

Feleksan Onar

Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia (22 January, 1879) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographer. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colorful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the preeminent figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France. He was later briefly associated with surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.

Francis Picabia was born in Paris of a French mother and a Cuban father who was an attaché at the Cuban legation in Paris. Picabia studied under Fernand Cormon and others at the École des Arts Decoratifs in the late 1890s.

In 1894, Picabia financed his stamp collection by copying a collection of Spanish paintings that belonged to his father, switching the originals for the copies, without his father's knowledge, and selling the originals. Fernand Cormon took him into his academy at 104 Boulevard de Clichy, where Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec had also studied.

Francis Picabia Collection

Francis Picabia

Born 1942 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, Gijs Bakker was trained as a jewelry craftsman and industrial designer at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and the Konstfackskolan in Stockholm, Sweden.

Today, Bakker's body of work includes jewelry, furniture, Objets d’Art, architectural installations, public spaces and exhibition designs. He co-founded the now-famous Dutch collective Droog Design in 1993 and Chi ha paura...? (Italian for "Who is afraid of...?") in 1996, a foundation aimed at expanding the understanding of jewelry beyond the frame of decorative accessories.

A revered teacher, lecturer, and consultant, Bakker heads the Masters Program at the Design Academy Eindhoven. He is highly regarded as one of Modern Dutch Design’s most influential artists and thought-leaders.

His work has been actively collected by internationally acclaimed museums including The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, H.W.D. Collection, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2005 he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition (and accompanying monograph) "Gijs Bakker and Jewelry," which traveled from Stedelijk Museum s'-Hertogenbosch to museums around the world, and his work has been published in numerous books and journals.

Gijs Bakker Collection

Gijs Bakker

Born in the United States, artist-designer Jonathan Hansen was raised between Canada, England, and Singapore where he grew his layered, and multi-cultured artistic vocabulary.

Based in New York City today, the designer has built a significant portfolio of contemporary design pieces rooted in the artist’s longstanding fascination for antique Greek and Roman sculptures, as well as the eighteenth and nineteenth-century furniture design — which he studied at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. His deep understanding and genuine interest in craftsmanship techniques inform his design process and material selection.

The designer’s editions with Ateliers Courbet are sculptural, abstract expressions of the human body drawing inspiration from the second-century Greek and Roman sculptures of the human body. The designer has collaborated with artisans throughout Europe in marble, travertine, and bronze to suspend the movement of his design forms.

Jonathan Hansen Collection

Jonathan Hansen

Josef Hoffmann (b. Austria, 1870) has an oeuvre that embodies the seismic aesthetic and philosophical shifts defining avant-garde art and design at the turn of the 20th century. He was a founding member of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, both organizations of artists and designers who sought to breakaway from rigid historical precedents.

A workshop dedicated to the production of craftwork of everyday objects including ceramics, textiles, and furniture, the Wiener Werkstätte pioneered Early Modernism. Hoffmann was integral to defining Western applied arts during this period. The Stoclet Palace (1905–11), Hoffmann’s masterpiece, embodies the artistic tension of this era and reveals the architect’s prescience; the mansion’s decorative details recall the fluid stylization of Art Nouveau, while the stark exterior walls—sheets of white marble edged in gilded metal—anticipate the austere planes and strict geometry of the International Style.

Though Josef Hoffmann died in 1956 his designs still make up the beginning of many institutions' Modern Design collections. They are still highly coveted works of fluid design and innovative ornamentation.

Josef Hoffmann Collection

Josef Hoffmann

For over thirty years, Belgian designer and interior architect Leo Aerts has committed his industrial design work to address his ongoing concerns for sustainability and longevity in design with timeless silhouettes and simple lines that emphasize craftsmanship precision and materials quality. Following numerous collaborations with European manufacturers, Aerts introduced Alinea in 1995, a small signature collection of furniture pieces and objects hand-crafted in Northern Italy with hand-picked stones.

His designs have won numerous national and international awards, including Red Dot Design Award, German Design Award, Good Design Award in Chicago, and AZ Award in Toronto.

Leo Aerts Collection

Leo Aerts

A Rome native, Maddalena Forcella lives and works in Mexico City where she has grown her expertise in textile and dyeing processes for over two decades resulting in a comprehensive body of textile work. After receiving a five-year training in Art restoration at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy (1982-1987), the Italian artist moved to Mexico in 1990, where she studied Textile Design at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. There she discovered what would become the focus of her work under the ongoing mentorship of masters Michael Garcia, Ana Roquero and Androna Linartas as well as indigenous Mexican artisans.

Forcella’s personal work using time-honored weaving and dyeing techniques, reflects the artist’s multilayered culture and knowledge acquired both from academic and empiric research. The artist is able to achieve a wide spectrum of colors, hues, and saturations through eco-dyeing, using local plants, bark, flowers, and insects. Her tapestries weave a symbolic thread that connects the traditional techniques to contemporary aesthetics. Her work expresses a special alchemy of complex, subtle color combinations and textures.

Today Forcella’s textile work has been exhibited in numerous museums around the world including El Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City, the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, Cer Modern in Ankara, and The Fashion and Textile Museum in London. Forcella’s work was also featured in international textile art events such as the International Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland and the Hangzhou Triennale of Fiber Art in China.

Deeply committed to the people she works with, Maddalena has lived and worked many years with the small weavers’ communities in the area of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. Today she actively supports the indigenous artisans and their rarefied expertise, working as a consultant on behalf of nonprofit organizations and governmental institutions. She co-founded several cooperatives in the region and is dedicated to empowering women and supporting the revitalization of ancient, disappearing techniques. In addition to her personal work, Forcella runs a design studio with the local artisans offering home textile and linen products through selected resellers around the world.

Maddalena Forcella Collection

Maddalena Forcella

Marc Thorpe Design was founded in 2010 by architect and industrial designer Marc Thorpe. Thorpe is known internationally for his innovative and dynamic work, taking a rigorous approach to the integration of architecture, design and technology.

Thorpe and his team collaborate with clients to develop and execute brand growth strategies. The studio conceptualizes design while building brands, and has the resources to produce consistent communication platforms. These include progressive architecture, interior design, digital media, graphic design, furniture design, product design, retail and exhibit design.

The studio designs relationships. The focus of Marc Thorpe Design is in the systemic intersections a project presents. In order to discover a project’s potential, the studio works closely with clients and collaborators to foster new ideas, establish common vision and innovative strategies of approach to nurture the design process. The results are design solutions with the highest degree of precision, quality and character.

The studio offers itself as an open system of exchange. Thorpe has dedicated the studio to the research, professional practice and education of systems thinking through the discipline of architecture and design. Thorpe states, “We believe in a holistic design approach, which engages the social components of space and form.” Collaborations with digital artists, interactive designers, new media designers, sound and lighting engineers and social media experts have advanced the practice’s diversity and knowledge.

Artist Collaborations

Works Available