Lampes Sèvres by Ronan Bouroullec/Design Miami/ Paris 2023
The Lampes Sèvres (Sèvres lamps) consist of an aluminium base that comes in three sizes and a porcelain corolla in three different dimensions, offering an infinite variety of combinations. The porcelain corollas are the result of a crystallisation process that creates abstract patterns reminiscent of eye irises or constellations, fireworks bursting with vibrations, colours and details.
This body of work is the outcome of a collaboration between Ronan Bouroullec and the Manufacture de Sèvres. It skillfully combines Sèvres’ longstanding expertise with a contemporary approach, revisiting the manufactory’s age-old techniques while adapting them to a contemporary aesthetic. The result demonstrates a harmonious fusion of craft heritage and modern creativity, embodied in these unique lamps.
The Manufacture de Sèvres is a unique laboratory for the creation of shapes and colours, where skills of excellence are handed down from generation to generation. Since the 18th century, the Manufacture has been a place of creation and production that has been able to collaborate with the creators of its time: artists, ceramists, designers, sculptors, photographers and even haute couture designers are invited to imagine and create new works of porcelain and constantly challenge the craftsmen working in the establishment’s 26 workshops.
Over the last 15 years, Sèvres has worked with some of the greatest names of our time, including Zao Wou-Ki, Pierre Soulages, Betty Woodman, Louise Bourgeois, Johan Creten, Barthelemy Toguo, Lee Ufan, Giuseppe Penone, Matali Crasset, Annette Messager and Julio Le Parc.
Located between Paris and Versailles, Sèvres is a shrine for cultural heritage and creation.
This public institution brings together the prestigious Sèvres porcelain manufacture, operating since the 18th century and the national ceramics museum created in the following century by Alexandre Brongniart. In May 2012, the National Museum Adrien Dubouché in Limoges joined the establishment, thus forming the Cité de la céramique dedicated to the transmission of an exceptional know-how and the spreading of knowledge on ceramic art.
Since 1740, the Manufacture de Sèvres has demonstrated its dedication to both heritage preservation and artistic experimentation. The Manufacture constitutes a unique living laboratory, as well as an influential player within the art world, notably for design and the decorative arts. It benefits from the excellence and expertise of its 120 on-site ceramists mastering some thirty specialized trades, as well as from the excellence of its materials (pastes, colours, enamels, etc.) produced in situ according to ancestral techniques and today serving as exceptional tools for contemporary artistic expression.
Two hundred years after its creation, the National Ceramics Museum houses a world-renowned collection of nearly 50,000 works, gathering together masterpieces from all periods and all corners of the world, as well as contemporary creations and works produced on-site at the Manufacture.
Both a manufactory of transmission, safeguarding its ancestral skills and expertise while widely disseminating knowledge and understanding of the ceramic arts, and a creative laboratory of the finest quality, having proven its capacity for porcelain innovation for nearly three centuries, Sèvres is a one-of-a-kind public institution that beautifully balances tradition and modernity.
