Cirvettes

Wilfried Allyn, Frédéric Armandon, Harmonie Begon, Baptiste Meyniel, Agathe Saint Girons, with a contribution from Eve George

Project led during the workshop dedicated to Glass taking part of the 2021 edition of the “Skills Academy”, a program by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. A multidisciplinary team composed of glassmakers, designers & engineers gathered around various projects during a global workshop, held in the CIRVA HotShop in Marseille, led by the designer Noé Duchaufour Lawrance.

The “Cirvettes” project anchors the experimentation of transforming industrial glass, collected from Pastis bottles in Marseille, into the shape of tiles.

These hexagons, traditionally made of terracotta, and covering once the floor of the CIRVA workshop in Marseille, are reminiscent of the shape of the bottle used by their geometry.

This material research then reached new heights: each tile becoming a stackable and combinable unit of measure, serving as a matrix for the production of several molds. A plurality of “constructions” were then hand-blown into these molds.

Photo Tadzio © Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, 2021

Since 2014, biennially, the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès selects and invites artisans, designers, and engineers to participate in the Academy of Savoir-Faire, with each edition dedicated to a specific material.

This fifth edition, titled “Glass”, was under the educational direction of French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, who is familiar with this material. By choosing this interdisciplinary theme, the Foundation intended to address glass arts in all their richness and complexity. It aimed to (re)discover and deepen the historical, symbolic, aesthetic, chemical, physical, as well as economic and social dimensions of glass, through cycles of conferences, master classes, and visits, collectively followed by the various “Academician” Laureates.

The collective strength of this program was notably realized through two weeks of workshops, organized in August and October 2021, in the workshops of CIRVA (International Center for Glass and Visual Arts) in Marseille. During these weeks of work, five projects emerged, playing with the codes and icons of the city, exploring the possibilities and limits of blowing glass from… pastis bottles.