Design Now

CREATIVE ERUPTIONS

An obsession with obsidian? Not exactly, but the rocklike volcanic glass produced when hot lava meets cold water has inspired two design collections currently on show in Paris.

For Un Regard d’Obsidienne (Visions of Obsidian) at the Galerie Pierre-Alain Challier, 13 contemporary créateurs, from silversmith and architect to sculptor and designer, picked up curator/designer Jean-Baptiste Sibertin-Blanc’s challenge to create new objects from this semiprecious material that varies in color from glistening black to translucent green and brown stripes, depending on how it is cut.

The fascinating results are original and striking: Absence, Paris-based Israeli designer Arik Levy’s pair of black and white coupes, one full, the other empty, reveal rugged brown striped surfaces reminiscent of a Pierre Soulages painting. Mathilde Brétillot’s table centerpiece, Le Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake), has smoothly curved translucent shapes that seem to float on a base of green glass. The black spirals of Christian Ghion’s Vibration Minérale vase echo lava forcing its way to the surface. A few creations are delightfully whimsical: silversmith Roland Daraspe has concocted a silver-handled black obsidian spinning top, the Tourbillon; glass sculptor Marion Fillancq’s prehistoric flint shapes sport bronze feet; Elie Papiernik’s transparent obsidian zebra is framed in steel and wood; interior architect Olivier Gagnère’s black Manège (Merry-go-round) candlestick swirls with sinuous shapes of striped obsidian and 18-karat gold. The designs were all handcrafted by Armenian artisans. “Each piece took from three weeks to two months to make,” says Michel der Agobian, whose company Cub-Ar has revived the obsidian tradition in Armenia. “Obsidian is very fragile,” he adds, “so out of ten attempts, only seven succeed.”

8 rue Debelleyme, 3rd, 01.49.96.63.00. (Through Mar 12) website

Already ahead of the curve with an obsidian design last year, haute decorator Alberto Pinto has dedicated his second collection of limited-edition furniture and home accessories to Vulcan, god of fire, metalsmiths and volcanos. The elegant Chaos console’s helter-skelter base of geometric steel forms and oxidized black lacquer top symbolizes the explosive moment of a volcanic eruption. The opaque black glass top of the Magma coffee table takes on the irregular form of a fresh lava flow, while the graphic Tephras end table’s hammered steel top with a bronze patina seems to have been powdered with volcanic ash. Named for two famed Italian volcanoes, the Etna and Stromboli lamps have incandescent, silvered and brilliantly colored glass bases.

11 rue d’Aboukir, 2nd, 01.40.13.00.00. website

MATERIALS FOR REFLECTION

Galerie Kreo’s current exhibition Matières à Réflexion might sum up the current trend in Parisian design—across the board, designers are exploring new possibilities in a plethora of materials. But the avant-garde Kreo comes up with new twists on the subject. For the last piece of her Natura Design Magistra collection, Dutch designer Hella Jongerius imagined a curious snail venturing across her Escargot table, all fashioned in creamy white Bernadaud porcelain. French designer Martin Szekely continues his investigations into carbon fiber with the sleekly minimal Heroic Carbon bench, stool and library steps. And Olivier Gagnère moves into the fantastical with a feathery mirror, handmade by one of the last plumassières of French haute couture.

31 rue Dauphine, 6th, 01.53.10.23.00. (Through Mar 19) website

GILDING THE SILVER

Innovative designers are transforming even the rarefied realms of historic French silversmiths. For Christofle, founded in 1850, American Karim Rashid—as unconventional in dress (a penchant for pink suits) as in design—has dreamed up limited-edition silver-plated accessories and furniture with golden trim (think 21st-century Versailles). His Silver Smooth centerpiece is a shallow coupe lined in gold; another, Silver Ray, is composed of pie-shaped silver steps with gold risers. Trompe l’oeil silver waves flash with gold on the Kaskade coupe, while the Kaskade end table is sculpted from layers of spiraling silver strips. website

Last year, Puiforcat turned radically modern by asking Patrick Jouin to design Zermatt, the company’s first solid stainless steel cutlery. In a back-to-the-future first, the 2011 version is finished like vermeil, in a gold immersion. website

SOME LIKE IT HOT

Radiators are rarely aesthetically interesting, but 5.5 Designers have come up with a seductive solution: Using Thermovit Elegance active glass panels, invented by Quantum Glass, that heat electrically, the French design quartet created a series of innovative systems that combine transparent high-tech heated panels with poetic landscapes in colorful wood, steel or marble. Called Matières à Chaud (Hot Materials) and produced by Saasz, the new-look radiators will be launched at next month’s Milan furniture design fair.

Available at Glass House, 4 Passage Saint-Avoye, 3rd. 01.53.01.77.00.

THE PAD FAIR

Now in its 15th year, the Pavillon des Arts et du Design, the annual Parisian art and furniture fair held in the Tuileries Gardens (this year Mar 30–Apr 3) continues its move toward modern and contemporary design. PAD’s London offshoot in the autumn has begun to outshine the original, attracting a new clientele from India, Italy, Russia, and North and South America, but this year’s strong Paris slate of French and international exhibitors may redress the balance. Among the top-rank foreign dealers: New York’s Cristina Grajales, Stockholm’s Modernity—bringing museum-quality works by Scandinavian designers including Arne Jacobsen—and the cutting-edge London Carpenters Workshop Gallery, showing Studio Job’s Robber Baron series of bronze furnishings celebrating the US’s 19th-century magnates and Russia’s nouveau oligarchs.

Paris galeries including Downtown, Jacques Lacoste, Alain Marcelpoil, Olivier Watelet and Camoin-Demachy will represent French Art Deco and 20th-century design, while contemporary dealers are bringing their own showstoppers: Perimeter Art&Design will field Guillaume Bardet’s marble totem lamp, Matali Crasset’s table centerpiece and jewelry, and Mathieu Lehanneur’s L’Age du Monde research project; the Tools gallery debuts with such stars as Maarten Baas and new talents Guillaume Delvigne, David Enon, Toni Grilo, Oskar Zieta and Victoria Wilmotte. Galerie Diane de Polignac will spotlight a new limited-edition ebony-and-steel modular sculptural table by French artist Guy de Rougemont, along with his original 1967 sculpture that inspired the polished-chrome Cloud coffee table he made for legendary decorator Henri Samuel. And Béatrice Saint-Laurent’s new BSL gallery will highlight Nacho Carbonell’s geomorphic Luciferase pieces made of metal, resin epoxy, sand and colored pigments along with Lito Karakostanoglou’s equally unusual Cage Scarab necklace. website

Originally published in the March 2011 issue of France Today