Barlet Sœurs

Barlet Sœurs is above all a family story.

Guided by their attraction to tableware, two sisters with different backgrounds and sensibilities, Anne-Sophie, printed designer for the biggest fashion houses and Bénédicte, pharmacy technician, decide to embark on a common challenge: creation hand-decorated earthenware.

Anne-Sophie will create the patterns, Bénédicte will make the volumes.

Claude, their dad, a carpenter by trade, renovated his father's first carpentry workshop for them, which at the time was the initiator of the family business Barlet Frères, later passed on to his sons. The 5th generation of Barlets to invest in craftsmanship, in the small village of St-Symphorien-des-Bois in Burgundy.

In this workshop, antique carpentry tools and ceramic equipment coexist today.

The earthenware oven was that of a former craftswoman from the region from whom the sisters had always sourced their crockery. Much more than equipment, throughout these years, she will certainly have passed on to them her love of ceramics.

After 8 months of work, the first oven and the first collection could be launched. A series of objects inspired by decorative arts was created.

Ornaments evoking hybrid, strange herbariums, a graphic and organic mix, stale flowers, weathered plants, mixtures of the seasons (springs in winter, autumns in summer) for poetic and singular pieces which sublimate the notion of objects of the daily.

“I like cups that are always ready to receive and give.
They are the garden, the valley, the lake on the table at home.
They are to fruit what vases are to flowers,
they mark the calendar of the seasons." Jean Girel

The Barlet Sisters' ambition is to promote everyday objects, each piece having its own personality, so it will have a first name: The Benny vase, the Ariane vase...

This project is a new adventure and requires new learning. Ambitious but humble, the Barlet sisters like to quote Jean Girel: "You don't improvise as a ceramist, you become one little by little over time with patience and humility."

The Barlet Sœurs collections are designed in Paris and the pieces are made in the St-Symphorien-des-Bois workshop. All models are artisanal, unique, cast, stamped in molds or by modeling then decorated by hand and enameled.