About
Marine Breynaert's vocabulary is made of raw lines, industrial history and precious materials. She combines gold, steel and metallurgical pieces in demanding luminous compositions which borrow from architecture, industrial design, constructivism and a certain art deco revival. Trained at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, with a background in textiles (Pierre Frey, Nobilis) and fashion (Heimstone), Marine Breynaert knew how to combine her different heritages and empower her style to create coherent, powerful and composed. Its lighting fixtures stand out as pure visual paradoxes, between industrial heritage and contemporary poetry.
The Workshop
It is in the industrial maintenance factory of her grandfather, an engine repairer in the Landes, that she physically enters the contact of machining and industrial parts. Having left for Bordeaux for 6 months between two posts, she stayed there for 7 years.
“I collected the defective parts that were going into the dumpster: ball bearings, gears… Looking over the workers’ shoulders,
I learned to turn, mill, weld.
Quite naturally, I assembled the shapes and thus created my first totems. »
Each element is a puzzle, which becomes learning. Discovering a shiny bronze under the paint of an engine enchants the designer. Soon she classifies the recovered pieces to compose a panel of shapes, and brings light into play: these are the first lamps. On a steel base or a ball bearing from which she will have brought out the light gray, Marine stacks a ring in brass, then a lampshade whose metal unfolds like lace.
The Materials
Over the years, the designs have integrated complex and precious materials: Carrara marble, ceramic, oxidized wood, glass have been added to the upcycled shapes. Each material requires distinct know-how. The studio works in collaboration with an art bronzier at the Orfèvrerie de Saint-Denis, a gilder in Paris, a milling turner and a ceramist in Normandy, and a wood turner in Bordeaux.
The final object is always a crossroads of workshops.
Assembly and finishing are carried out in the workshop in Fontainebleau.
Behind this mastery of know-how, Marine Breynaert likes to work on the finishes herself and leave room for workshop coincidences which will never be visible to the naked eye. The good find, the accident of a material or a color which does not evade the rule, is always the place of a new questioning, and of renewed creativity.