This is a building you’ve passed a hundred times while driving to CDG airport on boulevard Malesherbes. It used to be the prestige offices of Banque de France with a huge safe room surrounded by a moat! And before that, it was built in 1878, by architect Jules Février for Emile Gaillard, a member of the 19 th century banking … Read More
Revelations, Fine craft and creativity at Grand Palais
What pleased me at first was to hear Italian, Chinese, Italian, English and Spanish being spoken in the alleys. This new edition of “Revelations“, the fourth arts and craft biennale, is definitely International and artists, craftsmen, industrials mix happily under the beautiful decor of the Grand Palais. Here are the discoveries I made among ceramists, leather and rope weavers, wood … Read More
Spheres, the Earth and the Universe at BNF
It is an extraordinary exhibition that is presented at Bibliothèque Nationale de France after the Louvre Abu Dhabi. 2 500 years of representations of the atmosphere and the Earth from Antiquity to today. Two hundred pieces restitute all its nobility to the quest of discovering the universe which was started by Ptolemaeus with the first globes. The evolution of our … Read More
“Tissage, tressage” is the new art!
Danièle Kapel-Marcovici is a character. She transformed her mother’s modest company of cartonage Raja, into the largest European wrapping company in thirty years and has now developed two major foundations. One Fondation Raja for women’s rights et education and another, in Lubéron, called Fondation Villa Datris. Her mother’s workshops in Paris’ 20 th arrondissement have recently opened as the Parisian … Read More
Diego Giacometti, the talented brother
Some brilliant characters have the knack of bringing people together and Daniel Marchesseau, curator of over seventy exhibitions in Paris, Tokyo and Martigny, is one of them. The cocktail party organized at Christie’s for the launch of his thirty second book “Diego Giacometti, sculptor of furniture “(Editions du Regard), was the most fun, chic, amicable event of the month. And … Read More
Bamboo art is astonishing at Quai Branly
“I create art with the spirit of an artisan” declares Tanabe Chikuunsai IV in one of the videos of “Fendre l’air, Art of bamboo in Japan”, the new exhibition at Musée du quai Branly Jacques Chirac. There are 600 endemic types of bamboo in Japan. It grows quickly, is flexible, does not rot, and can be used as a container, … Read More
Tutto Ponti, a design giant rediscovered at MAD
Visiting “Tutto Ponti” the retrospective dedicated to Italian designer and architect Gio Ponti (1891-1979), was a true discovery and a wonderful immersion in 20 th century design. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, now called MAD, has gone a long way to give to the ” Italian Le Corbusier” enough space and luxury. Maybe too much? But you can visit the show … Read More
Giuseppe Ducrot, an Italian talent at Pierre Passebon
His great grandfather, Vittorio Ducrot was a foremost art nouveau furniture designer in Palermo. His mother is a forceful painter and textile designer, his grand father was an engineer and he used to play around in his workshop when he was little. But Giuseppe Ducrot has definitely found his own artistic track and the ceramics he exhibits at Galerie du Passage, … Read More