Stéphane Ducatteau, Sculpteur de Métal

The purist geometry of French sculptor/designer/artisan Stéphane Ducatteau’s limited edition contemporary furniture seems sculpted from rare exotic woods, wenge or iroko, perhaps. The surprise: From a sleekly elegant dining table to an irresistible Petit Train, his ebony-toned pieces, characterized by swooping curves, boxy squares or beam-like rectangles, are made of steel. “People have to touch them to realize it,” agrees the designer, a civil engineer who spent five years working at an architectural firm while simultaneously taking evening classes in sculpture, drawing and painting at Paris’s Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He then went on to learn the art of wrought iron. Combining his technical prowess with creativity, he produces his unique designs of tables, chairs, screens and lighting fixtures by hand in a Normandy atelier that is more of a forge than an artist’s studio. The artisan’s secret of warming up this cold material is in his patina. The steel is treated with acid, oxidized, then lacquered and waxed “to give it a silky feel,” he says. “How I apply the acid, how it dries and whether the atmosphere is humid or not changes the patina from ebony to bluish-green tints or coppery reflections.” The other surprise is just how comfortable his steel chairs can be, even the Cadre, an angular, frame-like inverted pyramid. Ever since his first participation at Paris’s Maison et Objet fair in 2001, Ducatteau’s pieces have been snapped up by important galleries from Toronto’s Roseland to Miami’s Luminaires, as well as by decorators in New York and LA, and even a Saudi Arabian princess. In Paris, the Talents gallery on the Avenue Niel regularly carries his work and recently gave him a two-month one-man show. www.stephane-ducatteau.com

Talents 26 ave Niel, 17th, 01.44.40.22.80