Today, the art printing workshop. This workshop brings together several: the engraving workshop, the tracing workshop and the offset workshop where Camille Bé-Dreux welcomes us. Here, the plate lithograph designer-printer prints designs on the pieces to be decorated. Printing is done in layers of color, with each color requiring repeating each step of the process. A job where you learn your know-how, where you deepen and enrich it as you go.
We are not artist-authors, we are craftsmen but at the service of all these works. We travel through time, eras and countries through what we do.
Camille Bé-Dreux is the manager of the art printing workshop. Very young, she is attracted by color, drawing and follows the workshops of the Fine Arts of Angers for children. She obtained her Baccalauréat in Applied Arts, continued her studies in graphic communication with five years of study at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg.
” Me, I’ve always been interested in the boundary between art and design or something applied. I also especially wanted a precise know-how and I like to use a very precise know-how to make a work of it. »
With more than fifteen years of career at the Manufacture of Sevres, Camille Bé-Dreux is part of the continuity of heritage preservation. She annotates the prototype in 3D to complete the paper archives.
” We write all these indications before having seen the cooked result. We write as we go along. We are going to bake; and from this first result, we are going to do a second firing, but after the final firing, we may also have small improvements to make or small remarks added in pencil because the piece has not been annealed. We have binders with technical sheets on each project. But we like to have the piece itself and these indications. To re-edit a piece, it’s good to have the object itself in front of you. The works must endure. Here, we can redo a work that may be 30 years old, 40 years old and sometimes 100 years old. »
” We don’t always have all the instructions or all the technical details in writing. It’s good to have the prototype, and if possible with the baked annotations, so that we have a nice tangible archive whereas a paper archive can be more fragile. »
At the Manufacture de Sèvres, the printing workshop breaks down the decor in terms of colours, designs and patterns. ” We are going to do one drawing per color. The colors react according to the temperatures, the atmospheres, the precious metals. This changes the way of working on his drawing. We will have to break down this pattern both in the color management and also in the flattening. Because we print a flat pattern while we are going to dress a volume shape. It looks a bit like sewing. »
” It’s a first research work where according to each shape that we have to decorate, we break it down with a pattern that will also be adapted to the decor. Its interpretation by printing because it is a more contemporary technique, therefore both less known and with the qualities of not having the weight of tradition. We have this freedom to explore, to experiment and to be as close as possible to what the artist wants to make feel through his work. »
According to Camille Bé-Dreux, the Manufacture de Sèvres gives meaning to the pieces produced: “ We are at the border of paths between a work that is there to exist as a work or a table service that has a utilitarian function. We are on objects whose production time is important, so it necessarily has a cost. But I really like this notion of time and soul that these objects can carry. They too will remain in time and will also be able to be transmitted from generation to generation. They are not everyday objects, they are objects that have a utilitarian function and even diplomatic functions, since they are also ceremonial gifts that each president will offer. In the embassies, they have Sevres services. We convey an image of French know-how internationally “.
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