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 designing 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

David Wiseman is one of the leading American designers of his generation. His work draws upon the history of the decorative arts and contemporary ideas to create uniquely beautiful sculptural objects and environmental installations. Wiseman derives inspiration from nature—a blossoming tree branch, a succulent flower, a seedpod, a perching owl—which he uses to create site-specific installations, lighting, furniture, and sculpture. Wiseman’s works are primarily unique objects made in his studio in Los Angeles, CA.

Wiseman’s sculpture, furniture, and site-specific installations derive from a deep, personal engagement with the natural world, and he is driven by creating works that have enduring quality and permanence, an attitude that is increasingly rare. He occupies a unique position in the world of contemporary design, bringing together fabrication, studio practice, and craft at the highest levels within a strong conceptual framework.

Wiseman has made site-specific installations for public institutions, international brands, and private collections. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and the Corning Museum of Glass.

David Wiseman Collection

David Wiseman

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 craftsmen’s 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.

View the Collection

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 from whom he has grown his own expertise. Pacchioni has continued to explore new materials ever since. 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 recognized the artist's embodiment of Italy's heritage of master-craftsmanship and art with the permanent installation of his work in the Embassy's entrance hall. In 2016, Pacchioni was awarded the title of Master of Arts and Crafts by the Fondazione Cologni. 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. Shortly after, Wahlen 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 Fond 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

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. Since, the artist has never ceased to pursue 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 the visual arts 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 embody the artist’s gesture as it quietly evokes movement. All while 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 Collection

Katherine Glenday

For over thirty years, Italian sculptor-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. The artist uses time-honored techniques to sculpt each of his pieces. His work draws inspiration from his extensive travels around the world as well as his interest for the organic, 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

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

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, of Greek descent, multidisciplinary artist Peter Speliopoulos lives and works between New York and Patmos, Greece. He received his BFA from the Parsons School of Design in 1982. For over thirty years, Speliopoulos established an international career as a high fashion designer and costume designer for opera and modern ballet. His design and creative direction have inspired the collections of Christian Dior, Cerruti and Donna Karan among others; his costume designs significantly figured in the work of director/choreographers Karole Armitage and Luca Veggetti.

Speliopoulos’ passion for craftsmanship, organic textures, and forms has informed his work throughout his creative career. The artist’s collection of unique ceramic pieces results from his long-standing fascination for and experimentation with the medium. His first exhibition at Ateliers Courbet, in September of 2019 featured an ensemble of highly textured vessels, reflecting the artist’s interest in the malleability and tactile expressions of clay. As he investigates time-honored techniques, the artist offers a contemporary interpretation of the traditional wheel-thrown forms of Antiquity ceramics with a personal twist.

The artist's second show with the gallery, CHTHONIC, on view from June 10 to August 19, 2021 was composed of works birthed in a time of deep introspection and solitude. Peter Speliopoulos’ body of work for this exhibition continues to investigate and embody the artist's Greek cultural heritage. A freed artistic expression, the symbolic and expressive pieces are an interpretive approach to the Primordial Gods of the Greek underworld. Born from chaos, and mythologized as bestowing darkness - dwelling in the abyss, the anti-heaven, and night - Speliopoulos materializes the essence of the deities by thinking about “the powers they possessed to create the cosmos and the world of humanity, the dark forces and the light, the struggles of life.”

In his own words, Speliopoulos prompts us to regard his work as allegories of the human condition;“...each piece tells a story of how external forces shape us, how we find beauty in our individuality and imperfections. I strive to create tactile surfaces that beg to be touched, alongside a visual power that makes the work feel alive and provokes emotion.”–Peter Speliopoulos

Speliopoulos has served on the Board of theInternational Folk Art Market, Santa Fe, since 2012, and as a member of the Board of Armitage Gone! Dance! since 2005. He is a co-founder of Fashion Centered, since 2013, an annual event benefiting Manhattan’s LGBT Center, continuing his work as a philanthropist and activist. Each vessel is unique and hand-crafted by the artist in his New York studio.

Peter Speliopoulos Collection

Peter Speliopoulos

Ukrainian artist, ceramicist, and architect, Serhii Makhno, has honed an iconic design vocabulary for over twenty years, spanning architecture, interior design, sculpture, and objets d’art. Since its inception in 2003 in Kyiv, Makhno’s studio has become a reflection of the artist’s multi-disciplinary vision- housing a ceramic workshop, furniture, and lighting design atelier alongside the team of established architects and designers.

Across mediums, Makhno’s body of work embodies the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic and philosophy from which the artist draws his inspiration. Makhno's series of lights exemplify his artistic sensitivity, whether small or monumental, each featuring a highly textured, sculptural silhouette of organic shape. Makhno, along with his team of local artisans, hand-form each of the ceramic pieces in their Kyiv studio before tediously layering multiple glazes, giving the surface its recognizable highly textured skin.

Makhno creates timeless, contemporary works anchored in traditions, as he intertwines his Ukrainian cultural and design legacy with inspirations drawn from the timeless beauty found in Nature.

Serhii Makhno Collection

Serhii Makhno

Born in England in 1973, Simon Hasan studied at the Royal College of Arts in London under Jürgen Bay and Ron Arad, graduating in 2008 with a Master’s degree. Hasan has garnered international attention for his distinctive use of the time-honored Cuir Bouilli technique, the process of boiling leather to harden, and in turn, shape sculptural forms. The time-honored technique dates back to the Medieval Period, then used by craftsmen to create armor. Recognizing the malleable nature of leather, Hasan controls the material by hand to create sculptural works inspired by both the craftsmanship pedigree of leather and modernist design forms.

The artist’s London-based studio is characterized by tactile hands-on experimentation and historic processes to create one-of-a-kind works. For Hasan, much of the process is about control and “identifying a moment when there is just enough of you in it and just enough of the material in it.” Hasan works with leading international galleries, as well as brands like Fendi, Kvadrat, and Poltrona Frau and has been a designer in residence at the highly regarded London Design Museum’s residence program. His works are in the permanent collections of the British Crafts Council, Gewerbe Museum, and Fondazione Fendi.

Simon Hasan Collection

Simon Hasan

Born in Goiânia, Brazil in 1962, Valéria grew up surrounded by exuberant Brazilian landscapes which inspired her from an early age. She initially studied Architecture, during which time she became greatly inspired by the works of architects Roberto Burle Marx and Oscar Niemeyer. Then graduated with a degree in 1985, cementing her interest in the fusion between urban landscapes and natural forms. After graduating, moved to Rio to pursue her Architectural career, it was here, a year later, where she was introduced to clay and became fascinated by its multiple possibilities for expression and development of ideas.

As her interest in ceramic grew, Valéria started exploring the convergence of natural forms and architectural elements as a conceptual starting point for her work. This idea has morphed into her largely installation based practice in which she conceives wall and ceiling installations of her ethereal porcelain works. She cuts and sculpts her botanically-inspired forms before they are fired to create rings, blossoms, petals, cups that emerge from the kiln as delicate forms. Her work features the repetitive, mediative, sequencing of separate elements to form a cohesive sculptural group.

Valéria Nascimento Collection

Valéria Nascimento

Artists

Chilean-born sculptor Abel Cárcamo is interested in the timelessness of morphic, archetypal forms as reflected in his body of work and the traditional modeling techniques he employs. Hand-sketching and hand-modeling each piece at his Paris-based studio, Cárcamo works closely with master craftsmen and artisans to materialize his creations in various materials such as bronze, plaster and wood. 

Cárcamo draws inspiration from nature as well as everyday objects. He continues to grow his artistic vocabulary and a cohesive catalogue of contemporary, sculptural pieces with sinuous yet minimalist lines. 

With his first US exhibition at Courbet, the artist introduces his most recent collaboration with French designer and design publisher Emma Donnersberg in 2023. The exhibition highlights the Penzai Collection, an ongoing series of limited edition tables and lights cast in bronze by revered french art founder, David de Gourcuff. 

'PENZAI' will be on view at the gallery through June 10, 2023. 

Abel Cárcamo Collection

Abel Cárcamo

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 France, interior designer and design publisher Emma Donnersberg left Europe and moved to the United States in 2000 to complete her Bachelor of Arts degree at Tulane University, New Orleans. She subsequently graduated from Parson’s School of Design in New York with a focus on interior design. With offices in Paris and New York City, Donnersberg has built an international clientele, and has completed numerous, acclaimed interior design projects in both Europe and North America.

Donnersberg’s cohesive design vocabulary translates in her Editions Donnersberg; a comprehensive design catalogue of pieces informed by artisanal dexterity and the designer’s ongoing collaboration with artists and artisans across Europe, such as the ‘Cèpes’ series of unique ceramic stools created in collaboration with master-ceramicist Karen Swami, or Donnersberg’s long-standing collaboration with architect/designer Michel Amar. For Donnersberg’s most recent work with Amar – the ‘Canyon’ editions of stone tables - Courbet introduced the duo to the stone carvers of Ateliers Saint-Jacques. Today, the Donnersberg Editions represents a comprehensive body of work inspired by Europe’s ongoing craftsmanship traditions and the artist’s ongoing collaborations with revered artisans across Europe.

Their shared commitment to master-craftsmanship ethos and collaborative approach have brought Donnersberg and Ateliers Courbet founder Melanie Courbet together. A longstanding friend and collaborator of the gallery, Donnersberg is who brought Michel Amar’s editions to Ateliers Courbet and more recently initiated the collaboration between Courbet and master-ceramicist Karen Swami. Courbet and Donnersberg’s ongoing dialogue has resulted in the latest Donnersberg Editions’ series ‘Penzai’; a limited edition of sculptural, morpheus tables and lights that were hand-modeled and sculpted by Chilean artist Abel Carcamo under Donnersberg’s creative direction, and later cast in bronze and hand-patinated by the bronzesmiths of Fonderie Fusion — David de Gourcuff’s esteemed art foundry based in Auvergne, France.

Emma Donnersberg Collection

Emma Donnersberg

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 Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Roma, Italia — Zona Arqueológicas de Roma, Italia (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.

Marc Thorpe Collection

Marc Thorpe

Martino Gamper (b. 1971, Merano, Italy) lives and works in London. Starting as an apprentice with a furniture maker in Merano, Gamper went on to study sculpture under Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He completed a Masters in 2000 from the Royal College of Art, London, where he studied under Ron Arad.

Working across design and art venues, Martino Gamper engages in a variety of projects from exhibition design, interior design, one-off commissions and the design of mass-produced products for the cutting edge of the international furniture industry. In 2007 He famously created '100 Chairs in 100 Days' by reworking furniture that had been dumped on the streets, which resulted in a beautifully mismatched family of objects.

Martino Gamper Collection

Martino Gamper

Matthias Bitzer was born in 1975 in Stuttgart, Germany. Based in Berlin, the artist works with multiple media to create abstract sculptures, drawings, and paintings. Interested in personal identity, Bitzer plays with the visual language of modernism, combining figurative portraits with abstract, geometric designs.

His work often draws on the biographies of historical individuals, with his subjects including the novelist Joseph Conrad, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, and the German avant-garde musicians Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, who are known for their collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht. In 2010, Bitzer was the recipient of the prestigious Otto Dix Prize, awarded annually to an emerging artist from a German-speaking country.

Throughout his career, Bitzer has shown in nearly two dozen solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States, gaining him the attention of the international art market, and garnering him the respect and placement with notable private collectors and institutions. He is represented by the Almine Rech Gallery in Europe and Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York.

Matthias Bitzer Collection

Matthias Bitzer

Based in Paris, esteemed architect and discreet artist Michel Amar has designed and built confidential interiors and elegant hotels particuliers for a private clientele – built up by word of mouth – for over 25 years.

In parallel to these private residences, Amar’s work is known to the broader public through such hand-picked hospitality projects as the Hotel Elysees in Paris, Le Royal Hotel, and Restaurant il Vino in the 7th Arrondissement.

Shown for the first time in the United States at Les Ateliers Courbet, his Objets d’Art collection includes elegant furniture, lighting, and decorative pieces, each reflecting the artist’s passion for the material, and emphasized by impeccable and painstaking craftsmanship.

The simplicity and sensuous silhouettes are hand-carved in marble and onyx, or cast in masculine, heavy-weight and textured materials. Together, these materialities create a cohesive and timeless collection. Amar works closely with some of the most highly regarded marble manufacturers and foundries of the French capital, including Les Marbreries de Seine and la Fonderie Chapon. With their close collaboration, Amar is able to synthesize forward-thinking design with centuries-old techniques perfected through generations of experience and experimentation.

Michel Amar Collection

Michel Amar

Born in 1981, Nigel Peake lives and works between his native Ireland and Paris. After graduating in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh where he subsequently received a RIBA Silver Medal Commendation in 2005, Peake was appointed to supervise a research unit at the EPFL architecture department for over two years. His drawings have been collected in several volumes published by Princeton Architectural Press and Yvon Lambert. With recent collaborations including Hermes, Luca Guadagnino and Rapha, his art work has been widely exhibited in Paris, London and Tokyo.

Nigel Peake Collection

Nigel Peake

French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance has built a cohesive body of work across disciplines and materials with a design vocabulary deeply rooted in nature.

Born in the south of France in 1974, he followed the footsteps of his father, with academic training in sculpture from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art, followed by a degree in furniture design from the renowned Les Arts Décoratifs.

Noé approaches design with an instinct and sensibility that gives form to projects ranging from architecture to furniture, interiors to bespoke, and limited edition collections. His sculptural work embodies both inspirations drawn from historical art periods and a timeless simplicity with pure, contemporary lines.

Noé splits his time between designing furniture and launching a project in Lisbon named Made in Situ. Since 2020, Noé has collaborated with the bronze artisans of Maison Intègre in Burkino Faso to create a collection of seven sculptural pieces inspired by vernacular architecture.

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance Collection

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance

Since graduating from the Design Academy in Eindhoven in 2004, Belgian-born, Paris-based designer Pieter Maes has sharpened his creative signature throughout his early collaborations working with designer studios such as Vincent Van Duysen or Ora-Ito and European furniture manufacturers including Tribu and Ligne Roset. The designer’s vocabulary embodies his ongoing interest in the resonant quality of pure forms found in artistic expressions spanning from the Neolithic or Cycladic Periods to the primitive art expressions of modern artists including Isamu Noguchi or Brancusi among others.

Maes’ visceral appeal for these archetypal forms have unleashed a personal body of work freed from the rational forms of the manufactured furniture design world in which he excelled for over a decade. In 2014, the designer opened his own studio in Paris and pursued an ongoing study and exploration of these quintessential forms and their influences on our collective subconscious.

With a mature understanding of the materials, their nature and respective craftsmanship techniques, Maes first explores forms through computer drawings. While informed by a chosen matter, the original design eventually morphs and materializes in concert with European master craftsmen using time-honored techniques. From the initial artistic vision throughout the development and fabrication, Maes creates modern pieces anchored in heritage; each being a contemporary expression of timeless forms.

Maes lives and works in Paris where he continues his creative collaborations with institutional clients while pursuing the development of his personal work and signature collection.

Pieter Maes Collection

Pieter Maes

Born in Ireland in 1973, Quinlan Osborne has lived in Canada most of his life. He studied architecture at the University of Waterloo, Ontario and the University of Illinois, Chicago. With numerous international projects behind him, his work has been noticed and awarded by his peers, including the Canadian Architecture Award of Merit among others.

Artists

Works Available