The wheel, the clay, the blade
Based in his workshop in Gien, in the Loiret region, Grégoire Lemaire is a ceramicist, sculptor, and engraver. Self-taught, he built his craft alone through countless hours at the wheel, eventually shaping large-format pieces that read more as sculptures than as vessels. Once a piece is thrown — when the clay is no longer entirely supple — he engraves. Few tools accompany this gesture: a blade, a few points shaped by his own hands. He defends this economy of means, convinced that a work owes less to its tools than to the craft that animates it. In this pursuit of mastery, he allows himself one exception: the accident of wood firing, when the kiln transforms a piece beyond what he had planned — and which he then welcomes as a gift.
Grégoire Lemaire in the workshop
Furrows like a melody
On clay still marked by the gesture of the wheel, Grégoire Lemaire carves furrows that return, echo one another, and end up belonging entirely to the form they dress. Nothing illustrative in this tracing: the piece does not depict an image, it carries a rhythm. This discipline of the repeated motif is fed by a broader attraction to raw, archaic objects — those that bear the trace of time and gesture rather than that of the sophisticated tool. Fifteen years of practice have not changed his method: he moves forward by making. He likes to invoke this thought of Soulages, which he has made his own — it is what he does that teaches him what he is seeking.
The engraved motif, the artist’s signature
Pieces by the artist Grégoire Lemaire
From the engraved plate to the imprint
For Estampe, Grégoire Lemaire created large hand-engraved clay plates, with the same restrained gesture he applies to his jars. Then, through linocut and inking techniques, he lifts the imprint of these engravings — capturing the furrow, the rhythm, and the texture of the original tracing. It is this imprint, this fragment of the artist’s work, that came to adorn the porcelain shell of the Estampe candle.
From engraving on clay to imprint on porcelain
The “Fragment” candle by Grégoire Lemaire
Grégoire Lemaire’s candle seeks this nod to the archaic, to the archaeological. It is the faithful capture of his movement, partially extracted, preserving the memory of his craft.
“Fragment” candle, drawn from the engravings of Grégoire Lemaire
