2023-12-06 15:00:00
It is a source of great pride for this historic French company – one of the first to be labeled a living heritage company in 2006 – to have been selected from 2,500 applications to participate in the “Great Exhibition of Made in France” at the Élysée Palace last July.
During this great meeting of French excellence, it was the emblematic Émile armchair from Duvivier Canapés which carried the brand’s values: a reinterpretation, by its artistic director Guillaume Hinfray, of an outdoor Chilean chair. in an indoor armchair in solid oak and full grain leather. A beautiful showcase of the know-how of the house, which recently added the art of weaving, hitherto little used in the world of design, to its already remarkable list.
Artisanal excellence
In July 2016, when Aymeric Duthoit left Bénéteau to buy the Duvivier Canapés house, it was a very strong story that he took on and which began in 1840 with the installation in Vienne of the saddler-saddler François-Baptiste Duvivier (activity that he passed down from generation to generation). Renowned for its exceptional materials – leather, wood, etc. – the brand has fallen asleep, with “dated” products. Then follows a new impetus aimed at moving upmarket and repositioning around handmade products in France, with a more current, chic, relaxed and timeless design.
The inauguration this year of a new cabinetmaking workshop on the same site as the saddlery and assembly workshops in Usson-du-Poitou (it was previously 25 km away) is part of a culture of artisanal excellence . “Inheriting know-how, enriching it and passing it on”, these are the common threads of each new piece leaving the workshops.
In its creative approach, the brand favors contemporary, straight and refined lines, noble materials and a sober design, punctuated with singular details which make it its signature, such as the absence of seams on the front and on the Arsène cushions, the new minimalist collection launched this fall and giving voice to Artisan design. Present at Milan Design Week, at the Dubai World Expo and internationally, its ranges of sofas distinguished by first names – Elsa, Serge, Jules, Joséphine… homage to muses, artists, stars – and the fruits of collaborations with new signatures of French design (Charlotte Juillard, Pierre Gonalons) have attracted major luxury brands and fashionable Parisian architects, thus placing “the quality and know-how cursor ever higher”, as Aymeric Duthoit humbly underlines.
“Truly beautiful things are handmade”
Comfort, look, resistance, seat height and depth… the design office neglects no parameter when designing each sofa, 1,500 to 2,000 pieces per year, made to order (never in stock). Then the workshops come alive: cabinetmaking to shape and varnish the legs and frames, upholstery to select (the skins are scanned to identify the slightest defect), cutting, sewing, stitching the covering materials (leather, fabrics) , fill the frames, pocket the cushions.
A workshop is dedicated to plumage, with an ideal weight of a feather and fiber mixture, defined in advance. A bundle of feathers will follow each sofa delivery, to re-feather it in the future if necessary…
Leather goldsmith
While some collections come from Italy, half of the skins are supplied by the Rémy Carriat tannery, based in Espelette, among the last French tanneries working for furniture and large luxury houses. Its bull leathers of exceptional quality and developed exclusively for Duvivier, are all full grain and never rectified, unlike the use in automobiles or furniture, where the leathers are sanded, reprinted then repigmented. Here, they are simply immersed in a bath of dyes (60 shades), thus retaining their thermoregulatory qualities: refreshing in summer, warm in winter.
A company, its territory
Marked by a major local anchorage and a sustainability policy, Duvivier Canapés remains one of the rare companies in the sector to manufacture all of its collections in France. Its new solid beech frames are designed from scraps from the nautical industry and its own scraps supply the heating in the workshops. To dress its sofas with fabrics, it uses French and Italian publishers, as well as Spanish Recover fabrics, resulting from the recycling of products from the fashion world, rewoven and dyed with a minimum of solvents.
And because making leather sofas generates around 15% of skin scraps, she has imagined a collection of accessories (trinkets, vases, candle holders) that she has made by the Red Cross workshops, local reintegration actor.
And the future? Aymeric Duthoit aims to “continue to develop furniture, even if the core business of our company remains the sofa, by relying on our expertise in cabinetmaking, with certain pieces of furniture adopting marquetry logic”.
#Duvivier #Sofas #art #handmade