Today furniture, decoration in two materials: wood and wool with Claire Salin, wood sculptor. Attracted by textiles and wood, she decided to put them together and make them interact. Similarities and contrasts, his creations of unique and tailor-made pieces using natural materials connect nature to everyday objects. Committed to nature, Claire Salin wants to give it back its place in our daily lives, our interiors.
Clocks, screens, sofas, stools and storage furniture are handcrafted, with pure and natural materials. His furniture and objects are durable, reassuring and invite daydreaming.
Life is like a ball of wool from which we pull the thread from the middle and we don’t know, we don’t see the thread, to see what it is like, afterward, we have to continue pulling.
Claire Salin, wood sculptor
“I searched for a long time for a name for my workshop because I wanted to highlight my work rather than my name. My work is always this thread that I pull. It evolves and ultimately, each name sets things in stone. So I just kept my name. »
Originally from Berry in central France, Claire Salin trained in Paris at the Boule school as a wood sculptor. Before opening her own workshop, she worked in Paris in a workshop where she created sculptures with a scientific aim, but she missed wood and the countryside too. She therefore returned to contact with nature and set up her workshop in a small village in the center of France. She selects the wool and wood that she works as closely as possible highlighting their similarities and differences.
“As for contrasts with wool, I work with the technique of needle knitting with very large yarn. With this technique, I will have something very plump, very soft and very matte. This will contrast with the wood that I will work with waxed finishes which will have a shine, a satin. We therefore have this contrast between the shine and dullness of wool. And then obviously, the contrast between the softness and this hard material which is wood. On the other hand, they come together on the warm side. These are two materials which have character, which are never exactly the same, which are unique and which have this warm side. »
“ On a more emotional level, and I think that’s what guided me initially. What I just told you in the end was an observation of the productions a posteriori, but what guided me, I think, was rather the symbolism and everything that these materials carry, the wool and the wood, it is what surrounds me. Where I live, it’s the wood from the hedges, the forests and it’s the wool from the sheep that are found in the meadows around my house. For me, this also speaks to the notion of an ecosystem and the links between the elements of the living world. Finally, by working them together, I bring human work and ultimately, I question our place as humans in the living world, that of animals and plants.”
Claire Salin continues her work until shearing the sheep and harvesting their wool which she spins and knits. “ I want to talk about one thread in particular which is the thread that I use the most, which comes from the farm of Alice and Jacques who are breeders in Vesdun, in my village. They raise sheep which have very long and very strong wool, and this is one of the reasons why I chose it, because it is very suitable for the use I make of it in the furniture where I I need a wool that has the characteristics of strength and resistance.”
“ The particularity of the harvest at Alice and Jacques is that I sheared the animals. I divide my time between my activity in the workshop and shearing sheep. There is a lot of work on shearing day to carefully select the fleeces that will be suitable for making the yarn. This production of yarn is entrusted to the Fonty spinning mill, in Creuse. Before, there is the washing stage which takes place in Haute-Loire and then the yarn returns to the workshop and it is me who knits it with the needles. »
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