design gallery

Sep 21 2022

ETHAN STEBBINS

ETHAN STEBBINS

09.22.2022 – 10.29.2022

Les Ateliers Courbet is pleased to introduce American artist and master stone carver Ethan Stebbins with the artist’s first gallery exhibition opening on September 22nd at the Chelsea gallery. The show will unveil four unique, large-scale pieces hand-crafted by the artist in collaboration with Courbet.

Lobi Ladder in a Kassena village in Burkina Faso, an inspiration for the Maison Intégre x Noé Duchaufour Lawrance collection.

Maison Intégre bronze artisans use the lost wax bronze casting method in Burkina Faso.

“My work mainly relies on paying close attention to the organic matter’s properties. One must appreciate the individual characteristics of a certain wood or stone type 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

Maison Intégre finisher inspects Mask Sconce in Burkina Faso workshop.

Inspired by the natural landscape and surroundings of his studio in coastal Maine, the artist has been investigating and highlighting the inherent beauty of the stones and other organic materials he carefully selects within a 10-mile radius. He searches the rocky coast for tumble stones to hand-cut and chisel while emphasizing their natural surfaces. His work often abides by the Wabi-Sabi ethos of Japanese design, drawing inspiration from Japanese American furniture maker George Nakashima’s work with instinctual woodcraft techniques that embrace the natural edge and textures of the wood.

Resulting from the artist’s ongoing dialogue and creative collaboration with Les Ateliers Courbet founder Melanie Courbet, this series includes an organic bibliothèque sculpture, an asymmetrical Wabi-Sabi coffee table, and a sculptural bed frame and bench, both of which use the Japanese joinery system that consists of interlocking pieces of wood without any hardware support.

Stebbins began training as a stonemason in 1997, building dry stone walls with local fieldstone. Since then, he has pursued apprenticeships under master gardener Masahiko Seko and American master craftsman Chris Tanguay.

The Ethan Stebbins exhibition will run from September 22 through October 29, 2022, at Les Ateliers Courbet, 134 10th Avenue, New York. The exhibit will be supported by a private reception at 6:00 p.m. on the evening of September 22nd.

Maison Intégre workshop in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Works on View

Wabi Sabi Coffee Table

WABI SABI DAY BED

WABI SABI BIBLIOTHÉQUE

SCULPTURAL SIDE TABLE

Aug 12 2022

KATHERINE GLENDAY

KATHERINE GLENDAY

KATHERINE GLENDAY 2022

08.9.2022 – 09.22.2022

ATELIERS COURBET is pleased to have once again worked with South African ceramicist, Katherine Glenday, to bring a fresh ensemble of porcelain vessels to the New York gallery. While Glenday is known for her exploration of white, soft bisque porcelain’s translucence, she has always engaged with color and the use of subtle pigment in her work with clay bodies. This exhibition highlights Glenday’s continued exploration of color and pigmentation, and her introduction of darker porcelain to her ceramic repertoire.

After forty years of working with porcelain Katherine Glenday explains that the material has accompanied her along her artistic journey, as well as her personal experiences. Each vessel reflects a unique set of circumstances, elevated by masterful and nuanced technique. She states that “grief” was what inspired her to work with darker clays beginning in 2020. Glenday found the black clay vessels to be meditative, grounding, and comforting. Absorbing and reflecting light much differently than white porcelain might, the darker vessels highlight the intensity of color and the pigments employed.

Considering her vessels to be “canvases in movement,” Katherine Glenday balances the approach of both a painter and ceramicist as she explores the materiality and matter through an “alchemical creative process.” For her new work with darker clay bodies and explorative firing temperatures, she made the decision to keep the form of the vessel relatively homogenous, lending more emphasis to the surfaces and pigments.

Katherine Glenday has found freedom in softer surfaces and lower firing temperatures. This exploration has captured a “chalky, nuanced light that seems to wrap softly around the vessels. They invoke feelings of landscapes and distant horizon-lines and contribute to a broader conversation in the history of art. They resonate with explorations of color by other masters, “from European old masters to Rothko’s abstract investigation of soft dusty colors.”

Works on View

Apr 26 2022

MAISON INTÈGRE

Maison Integre and Noe Duchaufour Lawrance Y Lamp being fabricated by Burkino Faso bronze artisan.

MAISON INTÈGRE

05.12.2022 – 07.26.2022

ATELIERS COURBET is pleased to introduce Maison Intègre Editions from Burkina Faso, West Africa and support the studio’s commitment to foster the country’s ongoing craftsmanship legacy as it brings the local artisans together with international guest designers and artisans in residence. Opening May 12, the Maison Intègre exhibition will unveil the studio’s inaugural series of limited-edition bronze pieces created in collaboration with French designer Noé Duchaufour- Lawrance.

Founded by Ambre Jarno in 2017, Maison Intègre is a metalsmithing workshop and foundry based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, that fosters West Africa’s long craftsmanship lineage. Maison Intègre’s Burkinabe artisans carry on the lost wax bronze casting technique that has largely remained unchanged since its inception millennia ago. In 2022, the studio built a comprehensive workshop to support the artisanship of fifteen artisans, a meaningful step to protect the craft traditions and provide a livelihood for the artisans.

Maison Intégre artisan sculpts a clay mask to be made into the Mask Sconce by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance.

As part of its program, Maison Intègre has invited French designer Noé Duchaufour Lawrance to spend a significant amount of time with the studio’s artisans and community in Burkina Faso. The series of bronze and brass works resulting from the designer’s immersion in the local artisans’ environment and their cultural heritage, draws inspiration from Burkina Faso’s vernacular architecture and archetypal forms. Duchaufour Lawrance reinterprets and translates forms traditionally sculpted in wood or hand-formed in clay into a single material — bronze. Collaboratively, Jarno, Duchaufour Lawrance, and the Burkinabe artisans used the local time-honored techniques to sculpt beeswax molds, later used to cast the resulting forms with liquid bronze.

“When living in Burkina Faso, you are constantly engaging with crafts in everyday life; you have to be creative and use whatever is around you to fabricate objects—whether functional or artistic. Everything is repurposed, repaired, and transformed with some kind of natural grace, all the while keeping it down to the essential, the functionality. I wish to share and communicate West Africa’s cultural confluences spanning from the Senufo and Mossi arts to a broader West African culture.” — Maison Intégre founder Ambre Jarno

Feb 17 2022

CONTINUUM PIETER MAES

CONTINUUM

PIETER MAES

03.16.2022 – 05.03.2022

Les Ateliers Courbet will unveil Continuum, a collection of limited-edition furniture pieces by Belgian-born, Paris-based designer Pieter Maes in collaboration with Dutch master woodcrafter Rutger Graas, the esteemed French upholsterers of Jouffre, the stone artisans of Il Granito, and 3DW. Informed by his engaged dialogue with each of the artisans, Maes’ sketches and paints continuous lines and curved silhouettes, drawing inspiration from the timeless quality of archetypal forms. Incepted and creative directed by Ateliers Courbet founder Melanie Courbet, Continuum is an early iteration of the gallery’s Editions Courbet program dedicated to further supporting the world’s rarefied master-craftsmen. The program nurtures its ateliers by fostering the apprenticeship of younger artisan generations with international artists’ collaborations. Every year, the program will bring guest designers and artists together with selected ateliers, to create a limited series of designs inspired by the expertise gleaned from long lineages of craftsmanship.

In this collection, Maes worked with four ateliers throughout Europe to create his Fold sofa, Palindrome chairs and daybeds, and a series of sculptural Dolm and Ur tables. “Pieter’s collection, as well as the Editions Courbet program, reflect the original intention behind the gallery; to support our ateliers and today’s rarefied artisans by initiating and promoting their collaborations with contemporary luminaries. The series is a paean to the master craftsmen behind it, their detailed work and dedication, as well as the rich legacies of excellence and humility each carries on,” says Melanie Courbet.

The collection takes the designer’s vocabulary in a new direction and builds on the designer’s past work for Vincent Van Duysen and collaborations with the likes of, Tribu, and Ligne Roset. “The monolithic forms of this collection are about breaking with the traditions of industrial design,” says Maes. The pieces combine clean, modern lines, with organic curves, generous proportions, and textured materials.

Maes and the masters materialize elegant and simple forms that evoke artifacts from the Neolithic and Cycladic Periods, as well as works of 20th-century abstract artists and sculptors. Central to Maes’ design vocabulary is the notion of simplicity and timelessness. “There’s something powerful about the serenity and mystery of these essential shapes. I have become obsessed with making simple, unfussy work that triggers something very ancient and dormant in people, no matter where they come from,” Maes continues. “There are many ways to get to the idea of timelessness. I like to position my aesthetic somewhere between the archaic and the futuristic and source inspiration from 3.4 million years of stone, bronze, and iron artifacts.”

Works on View

Aug 24 2021

Bodo Sperlein Contour Collection

CONTOUR

BODO SPERLEIN

11.09.2021 – 01.06.2022

Les Ateliers Courbet unveils an exhibition of new designs by London-based designer Bodo Sperlein as part of his Contour collection. The new Contour editions expand upon Sperlein’s ongoing design investigation of sensuous lines and curved silhouettes drawing inspiration from the clean-curved silhouettes of the 20^th century Art Nouveau movement. For Sperlein, “The Contour furniture range is a celebration of skills and crafts that push boundaries in creating intricate curves; which only master makers can accomplish, giving the wood and bronze pieces a fluid sculptural appearance, which is reminiscent of the Japanese influences on the Wiener Secession movement.”

Long drawn to Sperlein’s original Contour collection (c. 2009) which included a table, bench, and chair, Courbet encouraged the designer to expand the collection with a new console, chair, and side table which will be unveiled at the exhibition. With this growing body of work, the designer pays homage to the artisanal dexterity of his woodcrafter-collaborators in London. While the wood pieces challenge the material’s ductility, his latest cast bronze iteration emphasizes the consistent visual and tactile sensuality in the designer’s vocabulary as the dual bronze finish highlights the movements and folds of the works.

Bronze side table hand crafted in Czech Republic. Bronze sculptural side table by Bodo Sperlein.

In developing the bronze editions Sperlein had the opportunity to experiment with a material he had not used previously. Bronze allows for thinner and more refined forms and presents the opportunity to experiment with texture through the process of patination. The skilled artisans in the Prague foundry sand cast the piece to achieve the contrasting polished underside with the exterior’s tactile patina emphasizing the versatility of the material and dexterity of the artisans.

The wood pieces are handcrafted in the UK by British artisans, the pieces are available in wood treated using the traditional Shou Sugi Ban technique. Originated in Japan in the 18^th century, Shou Sugi Ban involves charring a wood surface to render it a deep charcoal, with the process imparting the resulting piece, called “yakisugi”, with an undeniable gravitas. The blackening of the wood reveals striking clean, distinct lines and an inherent textural beauty, balanced by the impeccable fluidity of the piece’s mirrored curvature. The pieces are available in a variety of materials including walnut, beechwood treated with the Shou Sugi Ban technique, and select pieces are available in bronze.

Works on View