Building Cathedrals

Lavished with ornament from one of the most elaborate decorative vocabularies ever created,

this Caterpillar is a beautiful Gothic machine. Heads turn quizzically  in the museum where it is displayed next to a 15th century maquette of the Saint Maclou Church,

 its nearby neighbor in the streets of Rouen.

This is a maquette of a monumental piece - small but still spectacular,

 at home in this Gothic city. It was created by Wim Delvoye, Flemish artist and spiritual descendant of Brueghel, who has a way - often jarring or disturbingly mocking - of transforming  objects emblematic of the modern world into the registers of traditional art or craft. Here a playful spirit hints at very different ideas of construction, 

and the varying aspirations and values applied to techniques of two ages so very far a part.

It is worth the time to take the time for these concentrated considerations

where standardized meets decorative

  with a good dash of humor. 

Wim Delvoye is exhibiting now at the Musée Rodin

The Magic Lanterns of Ombre Portée

moebius

Perhaps more than anything else, the quality of light determines the atmosphere of an interior. Nothing could be worse than uniformity. Luckily in a three-dimensional room, complete uniformity is rare - though overhead lighting on its own can be ghastly. Certain decoration magazines suffer from uniformly lit photos  that give an impression of vacuum-packed air; suffocation is the penalty for looking too long.  Most real life rooms have the benefit of old Sol's caressing beam through a window for at least a few hours a day and so much the better if it angles through a tangle of branches or winks through a billowing curtain.

The objects I'm illustrating today can't exactly be called light fixtures. Rather than lighting a room, the dynamic of these objects is shadow play. Like the light that filters into a room through the swaying branches before the window pane, they compose lively, expressive shapes in their surroundings. They are made by Ombre Portée (Cast Shadow), a company founded in 1998 by Eric de Dormael et Sylvie Janvier to create sculpture based on light effects. Individually they are well-made, highly seductive objects whose purpose is not to provide light so much as it is to decorate. They cast shadows, send reflections, sheen and shimmer into the surrounding space from cleverly constucted structures.

leo-g sconce

These light sculptures are made by hand in the owner's Paris atelier. Quality and creativity are key; they are one-of-a-kind pieces or small limited edition series, each one a combination of light, poetry, and technology. Sculpture, including monumental pieces, can also be made to measure for particular architectural projects.

le cardinal

zwartepik 3 sconce

dulcinée

lunes

sagaie lineaire

bois dormant

Sometimes the lines between fine arts and decorative arts become blurred. An emotion is created and we end up seeing things in a new light.

The Ombre Portée site illustrates many more styles of their work.

All photos from the site Ombre Portée

Autumn Trip

all photos Le style et la matière

Where am I?

all photos Le style et la matière