“After 30 years in the countryside, I wanted to return to Paris, to the Marais, not only because that’s where my children live, but because it’s the heart of the city, full of galleries and of fashion people, it’s so alive,” says furniture designer Ingrid Donat. “I was looking for something atypical, not the typical Parisian apartment.” What she stumbled upon, nine years ago, “is unusual in that it is on the first floor of a 17th century building and has a hanging door. garden — a rarity in Paris.”
The one-bedroom apartment had remained untouched since the death of its previous owner, radio presenter Menie Grégoire, two years earlier. “The photos weren’t really appealing and I remember visiting it for the first time with a lot of reluctance,” she says. “It was dark. The ceilings were low, very 1970s, with mezzanines everywhere, low windows and carpeted floors. Yet somehow I felt at ease. Perhaps it was the garden that gave the place a country feel. I can’t explain it any other way.
She decided to “demolish everything and start from scratch”. Three years of renovations followed, during which the entire space was transformed, with every detail — from the ceilings to the door handles — being transformed. designed or supervised by her. She describes it today as “a private nest”.
Donat’s career began in 1980, during a similar period of construction work – and almost by chance. She was excavating the backyard of her former residence in the Paris suburbs when a worker appeared in her kitchen with a piece of clay found in the ground. “I was 23 and began sculpting raw clay with my hands, shaping the form of a pregnant woman – a sort of self-portrait, as I was then expecting my first child. »
This spontaneous creation will lay the foundations for a career at the intersection of sculpture and functional design. “I started by sculpting my children, my family. And then I turned to furniture making because I couldn’t find what I wanted on the market. My first creation was a large coffee table because we had a large living room and I couldn’t find anything big enough. She shaped pieces out of plaster and her husband took them to the foundry to cast them in bronze. “From then on, whenever I needed something – a doorknob, a lamp – I made it. »
Down the street from Donat’s apartment is her studio, where she and her team work on the first stages of her designs before heading to a larger workshop in Mitry-Mory, just northeast of Paris . His furniture and sculptures connect two worlds. One is ancient African and Mayan art, reflected in the scarified textures she applies to bronze. The other is the art deco movement: evident in the materials she chooses, like the parchment that wraps a 14-drawer console in her bedroom.
Although she readily admits to working quickly – sometimes impatiently – Donat also calls herself a perfectionist. “I need everything to be perfectly executed, even the smallest, often invisible elements. »
His work has attracted the attention of notable collectors and clients, including Yves Saint Laurent, Tom Fordand Brad Pitt, as well as the interior architects Pierre MarinWaldo Fernandez and Los Angeles-based Clements Design. Donat has been represented by Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery (co-founded by her son, Julien Lombrail) since 2006.
The Ooni Commode testifies to his perfectionism: one of the artist’s most emblematic pieces, it will soon be exhibited at the Ancestrala solo exhibition at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in New York. This bronze chest of drawers, which took two years to create in collaboration with 15 artisans, is covered with the scarified lines that define its style. Besides that, The Mayan Dresser uses insect-like designs inspired by ancient Mayan art.
Born in Paris, Donat’s mother was Swedish and his father French, originally from Réunion. She spent most of her childhood in Sweden, but returned to Paris when she was 19. Coming from a family of creatives – her father was a painter and her grandfather an architect who built the art deco house she grew up in – these influences profoundly influenced her. has shaped her practice and her home, from African-inspired patterns to red and ocher tones that she attributes to her “Nordic influences”.
Donat clad the walls of his apartment with light, engraved wood panels – a nod to the scarification techniques used in his furniture – and replaced the carpet with Versailles parquet flooring. The mezzanines were removed and each window enlarged to let in more natural light.
The beams are a striking signature of the apartment. “When Menie Grégoire renovated the space in the 1970s, she discovered original 17th-century beams on the bedroom ceiling. The ones in the living room were beyond repair, so I took inspiration from the bedroom and reinvented them, carving them with the same tribal patterns I use in my furniture, almost like tattoos,” she says.
Alongside his own furniture, a pair of André Arbus armchairs face a fireplace transported from his former home. Pierre Jeanneret chairs sit alongside a Tiffany lamp with green stained glass; an André Groult armchair in the bedroom coexists with Moroccan kilim rugs and other objects collected during his travels.
Regardless, entering the apartment almost feels like entering a retrospective of his work. There are bronze stools with his iconic figures in the corners; bronze and parchment-covered coffee tables engraved with circles and other geometric shapes; and a pair of lamps in the shapes of a man and a woman.
“It always seemed natural to me to live surrounded by objects and furniture that I created myself,” she says.
Donat’s transition from sculpture to furniture design was sparked by her friend Diego Giacometti, brother of Alberto, from whom she purchased sculptural furniture. “One day he said to me: ‘I’m going to stop selling you products. You’re a sculptor, so make your own pieces!’ “, she remembers. For the next 20 years, Donat created furniture, but for herself, without exhibiting it.
At 40, she separated from her first husband. “I said to myself, ‘I have to go back to work.’ » In 1998, a friend suggested that he exhibit his work in his gallery. Everything sold.
“I couldn’t understand why people wanted to buy my pieces, especially since I felt like I was showing such intimate work – pieces I had at home.” Five years later, the American art dealer Barry Friedman contacted her. His son went on to co-found Carpenters Workshop Gallery “and has been a full supporter of me ever since.”
Through his creations, Donat redefines the techniques and aesthetics of decorative arts in a modern context. She cites French art deco designers as influences, including Pierre Legrain, André Groult and Armand-Albert Rateau. “I’m fascinated by the way they created cohesive environments, designing entire spaces while remaining obsessed with the smallest details.” His house is a pure manifestation of this.
Today, Donat is thinking. “I now sell to the children of my first customers,” she says. “And that is the greatest compliment, the greatest reward: to feel that I have created a timeless work.”
“Ancestral” is at Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery, New York, from November 14 to February 14 (carpentersworkshopgallery.com)
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