This French Design Studio’s Process is Steeped in Tradition

When Sophie Gelinet and Cedric Gepner went about choosing a name for their studio back in 2017, they selected something fanciful and not at all rooted in reality — “Haos” supposedly referred to a tree whose flowers were white in the morning, yellow at noon, red in the evening, and died overnight, and the tree was never mentioned again after an appearance in a French literary magazine from the 1800s. But the studio’s name and its provenance stand in stark contrast to the way Haos actually functions — the couple, neither of whom is formally trained in design, work primarily with French artisans who often have decades of experience working with the same material. It’s a process rooted in all things tangible and permanent, one whose outcome can only and inevitably be an object that’s been stripped down to its most essential form. Their first collection was a series of lights, assembled from stacked cylinders of wood, ceramic, and brass —materials that pop up again in their third collection, which we’re featuring here today.

For this collection, Haos worked mainly with solid oak from the Saône-Et-Loire region in France; it forms the folded-leaf shape of the coffee table and the geometric frame of a velvet or linen sling chair. Sand-cast bronze, in a Brancusi-like floor lamp, and Japanese woven paper used here in a sconce, round out the collection. The work was photographed in the house of a student of Le Corbusier in the city of Pullay in Normandy, which seems fitting for a collection so steeped in  French tradition and technique. It will be available exclusively at StudioTwentySeven in the US.

PHOTOS BY FRANÇOIS COQUEREL

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