Two French friends are bridging the divide between furniture and art with their unique pieces adorned with whole mountain ranges
“We start from a block of wood that we assemble into a piece of furniture and sculpt until the mountain seems to come out of that piece of furniture. Our goal is for sculpture and furniture to become one“
For Benoît, it was the creative aspect that drew him to cabinetmaking. ‘I found it great to design a piece of furniture and have the ability to make it,’ he explains. ‘This was true for all kinds of objects. Wood is a material with which we can do a lot of different things. It is also a renewable resource, which increased my interest.’
Benoît and Manu started staying late at school in the evenings to create small wooden objects to sell, and it was during those sessions that they came up with the idea to make things together. They entered a competition at the French Consulate in Quebec and created a piece especially for it, made up of 150 gears driven by a motor. The piece won and that spurred the pair on to pursue the more creative side of woodworking, not necessarily related to furniture or utilitarian objects.
Homeward bound
After three years at the Quebec Cabinetmaking Institute Benoît and Manu returned to France and set up a workshop together. ‘The goal was not to be alone, so we found a first workshop in a former industrial wasteland that had been converted into artists’ studios,’ says Benoît. There they worked alongside creatives including photographers, ceramists, jewellers, graphic designers, painters and sculptors, in a small and not very well-equipped workshop. ‘This forced us to think about small parts, experiment and think about a lot of prototypes and new ideas,’ Benoît says.
They started out making wall sculptures inspired by mountains. Benoît recalls: ‘In 2015, just before leaving North America, we took a road trip of more than 13,000km across the United States and created a sketchbook whose common thread was the borders, natural and artificial, that divide the states and territories. Our work was already geographical. Our first works used birch plywood in which you could see the glue joints when you carved it. We then used it to create topographic lines on sculptures.
‘One thing led to another, and with our workshop growing, we were able to create these sculptures in solid wood. That’s when we moved our workshop to a larger location at the foot of the Vercors mountains in the Drôme region. The view of the massif from our workshop then reminded us of the first mountains. We first carved them on wall sculptures, and little by little we started looking into how to integrate them into pieces of furniture. We are keen to experiment with things without specific projects behind them. At that time we only produced wall designs, purely for decoration. Then we looked at how to integrate them into furniture.’
For the past three years the pair have been based in La Petite- Raon in the Vosges massif in north-eastern France, and the mountainscapes that surround them influence much of their work. They also spend a lot of time in the Alps, where many of their customers are based. The workshop is equipped with all the standard woodworking machines – tablesaw, jointer, planer, bandsaw and so on – but they do not use CNC in order to create unique pieces that can adapt to the grain of the wood. ‘We sometimes play around a particular knot or grain,’ Benoît says. As well as the machinery there are a workbench, a carving bench and a finishing room, and they are currently expanding to have a room solely dedicated to sculpture and a small showroom. ‘We think we will stay in this workshop now, and are doing everything to arrange it and adapt to our new requirements. Since we do a lot of the work ourselves, it takes us quite a bit of time,’ says Benoît.
They have separated their roles in the workshop, with Manu taking care of the technical part of the pieces and Benoît leading on the artistic and stylistic aspects, although they can each carry out each other’s tasks. Both have to sign off on every piece. Benoît says: ‘This allows a certain accuracy in the compositions, but sometimes also complicates the projects when we have different views. As in every duo, we cultivate the art of compromise!’ All the sculpting is done by hand using carving tools ranging from power carving discs to rasps and gouges. Benoît says: ‘We start from a block of wood that we assemble into a piece of furniture and sculpt until the mountain seems to come out of that piece of furniture. Our goal is for sculpture and furniture to become one.’
He adds: ‘We love bridges between disciplines. We always start creative work with wall or purely decorative pieces, and then insert them into furniture. Likewise, we like it when our creations have meaning and a certain narrative.’ The mountainscapes the pair create tend to be imaginary ones. Benoît explains: ‘We found that this allowed for more poetry. Although often very beautiful in reality, mountains, once sculpted, don’t always seem so impressive to us. We look at them from a point of view that does not always reflect reality. That is why we prefer to evoke mountains rather than representing a particular one.’
Descendent of a woodworking heritage
The pair find inspiration in Scandinavian designs that give pride of place to natural wood, but also in the traditional cabinetmakers of the 16th and 17th centuries who decorated furniture with precious wood veneers. ‘We feel that we are descendants of these traditional cabinetmakers,’ says Benoît. ‘We embellish furniture not with veneer, but with carvings. With globalisation, precious woods are no longer really precious, so the added value to a piece of furniture must come from elsewhere. We thought about what is valuable in our society today and imagined a visual signature that invites daydreaming, contemplation and time. In our opinion time is one of the most precious things today, and the furniture we imagine invites us to slow down. We often say that on our coffee tables, there is a place to put your cup and a place to look.’
Benoît says: ‘We love working on pieces that question our profession. The piece we’ve most loved working on lately is a coffee table that’s almost completely covered in mountains, so there is almost no room to put things on it. It has lost almost all of its utilitarian side and, when we exhibit it, we like to observe the spectators’ reactions. It’s always very interesting how this notion can sometimes disturb, sometimes fascinate, sometimes disgust or even just stimulate the imagination. Children are often very intrigued by these mountains that seem to come out of the table. They often stay for several minutes to observe, and we imagine the stories they tell each other. We also like to observe this in adults – then we say to ourselves that the bet has been won.’
The most challenging project the pair have worked on was a sculpture of the Mont Blanc massif, the highest peak in Europe, on a table more than 5.3m long. ‘Our client wanted a one-piece sycamore maple, so we could not join several strips of wood together,’ Benoît recalls. ‘We had to imagine a whole system to prevent the top from moving over time. In addition, the table had to be delivered to the upper floor of the building and we had to bring it in through a window using a crane. It was quite a challenge!’
Growing through challenges
Benoît and Manu work around 70% on commission, and their own collection will often spark new commissions as clients ask them to adapt an idea to their own interiors or wishes. As well as the freedom and flexibility to hone their skills by designing for their own collection, they enjoy the creative challenges of working in different environments and within certain constraints. ‘We are currently working on the development of a large wine cellar for a Michelin-starred chef in the south of France,’ says Benoît. ‘We really like working with restaurant chefs because they are used to working with artisans and artists, and they trust us. That means we are very free, despite the large scale of the projects and the challenges that arise from them.’
He adds: ‘When we work on commission projects, we have to be inventive and be good right away, because these are often unique projects. The advantage is that it takes us out of our comfort zone and pushes us to experiment with things that we would not have explored without the approval of a client. For example, at the beginning, our reliefs were quite timid on utility surfaces, and it was our customers who pushed us to make taller and more ambitious mountains!’
The pair prefer to use local wood species they can buy from nearby sawmills – particularly sycamore maple, oak, ash and walnut. ‘We always favour the natural colours of the wood and avoid staining,’ says Benoît. They use epoxy resin in some projects, notably to imitate the effects of rivers or lakes, and often incorporate other materials such as bronze, dried flowers, ceramics or textiles, for which they collaborate with other. ‘It’s a great way to continue creating while creating a network of creative people who often push us to rethink our works,’ Benoît adds. To finish they use oil-based hand finishes. ‘Our customers often have requirements regarding respect for the environment, so all our finishing products are eco-labelled,’ he says.
As well as the wine cellar project in the south of France, the pair are working on pieces they will present at Révélations. This is an international biennial of craft and creation conceived and created by Ateliers d’Art de France, a professional organisation representing the 281 French fine crafts, which takes place in Paris in May 2025. Benoît says: ‘It is a very important show in our profession which brings together a fine selection of French artisans as well as international makers.’ Going forward Benoît and Manu would like to make large wall sculptures for hotel lobbies and other big spaces. ‘We love immersive works that take the viewer into the artist’s world,’ Benoît says. In their spare time they love playing music together – Manu plays guitar and Benoît plays banjo and piano.
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Photographs unless stated by Ben and Manu