TRIBUTE TO ART NOUVEAU
Before creating stores, I was an architect.
Unable to find tiles on the market that I liked for my projects, I used reclaimed tiles.
And in particular an elegant white Art Nouveau enameled tile which very naturally found its place
in the renovation of a house for a beautiful Italian woman.
Years later, this tile having lost none of its beauty in my eyes, and my power as an object editor expanding,
I tried to reproduce it in India. Not that India is a country that has particularly developed the art of ceramics,
but on the other hand relief and sculpture inhabit the slightest architecture. There is also still a lot of furniture there
wooden from the colonial era decorated with tiles with floral motifs in relief, very close to my model.
So I was not very surprised to discover a small production of this type of tile. Time to put my project together
at execution, this production had disappeared and was replaced by tiles of a style that I would describe as “soft”
and which has nothing to envy, in decadence, of the worst Italian mass productions. Fortunately, here it was
only reproduction of the original model. So this reissue, which I wanted with enough stubbornness to persevere
wanting to make it for so long, has become for me the symbol of what I owe to Art Nouveau.
It was 2006 and everything has changed since then, we stopped scouring the world for rare tiles.
And my Indian supplier has decided to stop this product, which is far too difficult to make and generates too small quantities.
to be profitable. I then tried to make them in France and Belgium but basically the observation
was the same for the producers, leading us to ask our customers too high a price, thus generating even smaller quantities.
