Ronan Bouroullec’s new lamps with Manufacture de Sèvres resemble otherworldly creatures

Ronan Bouroullec collaborated with Manufacture de Sèvres, France's porcelain manufacturing workshop founded in the 18th century, to create a series of aluminium and ceramic lamps on view at Galerie de Sèvres, Paris, until 25 November 2023.

The latest addition to the designer’s output – which is explored in a new Phaidon book, Ronan Bouroullec: Day After Day – the ‘Sèvres Lamps’ are available in three heights, and are defined by a porcelain aureole supported by essential aluminium profiles in three heights, combining a minimal design gesture with the unexpected expression of colour on porcelain.

Ronan Bouroullec and Manufacture de Sèvres 

Like exotic mushrooms or enigmatic sea creatures, the trio of lamps features smooth, precisely formed aureoles, hand-thrown in the large Manufacture de Sèvres studio and spray-glazed to achieve the colour effects. The almost ethereal glaze is the result of Bouroullec's research into the company's archives, where he found old examples of experiments in crystallisation. 

Due to the uncertainty of the process, each piece is unique, featuring multi-tonal abstract patterns that nod to the exploding effect of fireworks or celestial constellations. 

'It all quite delicately explodes in the kiln, and when the pieces are taken out, you’re not quite sure if they might be alive,' says Bouroullec, for whom this project meant being able to manipulate a process that he feared could result in a too precise design gesture. '[Each lamp] could be a sea anemone, a portion of sky, a flash of light in space. I wasn’t at all aiming for this, but there is a very natural quality that appears; natural and uncontrolled.'

'Lampes Sèvres' by Ronan Bouroullec is on view until 25 November 2023

Galerie de Sèvres
4, Place André Malraux
75001 Paris