Extract from the “Dictionary of business and entrepreneurs love”, edited by Denis Zervudacki, Plon.
Japan, where the shaping gesture is just as important as the crafted work, registers the most remarkable of its craftsmen in the register of Living National Treasures. Perhaps they have understood, even more intimately than us, that what must be perpetuated is the life of the gesture, it is the thought that the craftsman infuses into the object and which is transmitted to that which then holds it.
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Japan, which the main houses of the LVMH group really discovered in the 1980s when they really established and developed there thanks to the great Japanese tourism movement in Europe, has taught us a lot, because we have faced , with great success, two philosophies of craftsmanship: in Europe, perhaps because we are influenced by a thousand-year-old culture of long-aging wines, we are looking for objects which gain a patina or improve, whose perfection is revealed. with time; in Japan, the perfection of the object, like that of a great sake, comes out of the hands of the craftsman and it is, in particular in their art of forging, almost immutable. Discovering what the Japanese clientele dreamed of and the nature of the requirement that they place in craftsmanship, we were able to take into account this ideal, new to us, and choose our leathers differently, sew with more precision, find more finely woven materials. This symbol concentrates there all the truth and the vigor of our craft traditions: they dialogue and renew themselves without distorting each other.
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Why this preamble? Quite simply to clearly establish that great craftsmanship radiates throughout the world. This is its natural scale. It fascinates like all that is distant and rare. Very high quality craftsmanship goes hand in hand with deep sea sailing and distant expeditions. (…) If craftsmanship speaks a language understandable by all cultures, it is because we all share the admiration for fine craftsmanship and technical prowess. In this sense, craftsmanship has common roots with sport, which is also a great source of beautiful gestures and great emotions, but sport is a practice where the moment of grace vanishes as soon as it appears, while craftsmanship is a production that lasts in the produced object. We are all sensitive to what emanates from a perfect work, because we admire what it takes memory, patience, attention, will and ambition to achieve product excellence. ‘Arts and crafts. What we see in the created object is the sum of virtues that had to be implemented in the manufacturing process itself to achieve the result. Likewise, the harmony proper to a beautiful artisanal creation is of a very particular nature: it is a harmony resulting from the beautiful arrangement of parts and materials, from the elegance of the connections, for example in jewelry between the stone and its setting, in leather goods between leather and metal. There is a universally felt satisfaction that arises from the contemplation of that which is well adjusted. It is no coincidence that the term “craftsman” goes back to the primitive Indo-European galaxy from the words in “ar” where art, harmony, order, arithmetic rub shoulders, linked together by the confidence that one feels in front of an assembly. solid, balanced, masterfully crafted.
All my taste for craftsmanship comes from there: it is at the crossroads of art and number.
All my personal, immoderate taste for craftsmanship comes from there: the craftsman is at the crossroads of art and number, of creative inspiration and geometric rigor. I particularly like the challenge that one finds in the production of the craftsman, as in the fragile balance of the two plates of a balance, as much useful art as applied mathematics. If I am so attentive, it is because a long practice of the piano made me work, in long hours of exercise, this musical fusion between gesture of the hand and the rigor of the spirit which counts and which breaks down, between the mental impulse of feelings and the physical impulse of the arm and fingers. The craftsman is at the confluence of this double requirement, which I imagine in the form of the two hemispheres of our brain, distinct and complementary at the same time: on the one hand the variety and the profusion of artistic inspiration, free in its means of expression and without practical finality, on the other hand the economy of means of geometric thought. It is up to us to ensure that the balance is never upset: without creativity, the object does not arouse interest; without rationality of the mode of manufacture, the object is not viable.
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