The Box N°26 is curated around items that make us happy in the springtime.
For each Box, we reveal one brand that will be included and we are very happy to partner with Atelier Soleil for our May Box.
Atelier Soleil creates handmade earthenware products in Moustiers, France.
In 1979, the famous interior decorator Tonia Peyrot established the faience workshop Atelier de Ségriès. Later in 1992, her son Franck Scherer, who had developed a passion for faience and mastered the craft, decided to establish his own atelier after his mother sold it.
While working at Ségriès, Franck met Géraldine Dorche, and in January 1995, they launched their own atelier, Atelier Soleil. In 2006, they acquired the original molds of the Atelier de Ségriès collections, which they had helped create, thus returning to their roots.
Franck is the master craftsman, and Géraldine manages the business while highly-trained decorators paint the faience by hand. Franck always uses centuries-old techniques with absolute respect for the art, whether he works on traditional pieces, creates new designs and forms, or fulfills a special order for a client.
The creation of faience, from rough red clay to smooth, silky, sparking finished pieces requires only three basic ingredients: water, earth, and fire. However, mastering centuries-old techniques such as molding, throwing, casting, glazing, festooning, decorating, and cooking is necessary for this delicate alchemy to succeed.
Atelier Soleil is a custodian of traditional techniques and handcrafts and understands that each piece that comes out of the kiln is unique and bears the maker’s invisible fingerprints.
The natural clay used by Atelier Soleil is carefully selected for its purity and lightness and worked by hand using three traditional methods: embossing, throwing, and molding. The embossing technique is used for flat pieces while throwing is required for vases and pitchers. Molding is used for more intricate shapes.
The faience is fired twice: first to cook the dried clay, or “biscuit”, and then to vitrify it through heat fusion for a smooth, glass-like finish after it has been glazed and painted.
To master alchemy, the decorator draws freehand on “raw” glaze using metallic oxides mixed with water to determine the final colors. The oxides are applied with thin brushes, and the decorator’s hand must remain steady to avoid mistakes that could ruin the piece.
If you are looking forward to seeing what item we have included from Atelier Soleil, be sure to reserve your May Box HERE
