A conversation with
Emmanuelle Roule
Head to Marseille to meet Emmanuelle Roule, the ceramicist behind the pots in the Emmanuelle Roule × By Charlot collection. Work on her studio, located just a stone's throw from the Old Port, is nearing completion. We're the first visitors...
Hello Emmanuelle, tell us a little about yourself and your background...
I am Emmanuelle Roule, artist and designer. I trained as a graphic designer, I graduated from the Olivier de Serres school in Paris in graphic design. Fresh from graduation, I founded my creative studio in 2007, developing a transversal practice between image, space and object. I also joined a collective of visual artists at that time with whom I worked for ten years. We initiated an artistic project, the Honey Bank , which developed an environmental approach connecting humans and bees in public spaces. In 2012 I got my hands dirty. I didn't have much time, but I felt the need for an outlet outside of commissioned work. At that time I was living in Saint-Denis and I looked at the courses that the municipal school offered. There was a discipline that I had never approached during my studies: ceramics. I decided to try it, without any particular expectations. So I ended up taking night classes for three years with a pretty awesome teacher.
Are there any artists in your family?
There certainly are some, but they don't admit it. I have a fairly classic family pattern in which artistic fiber has never been a profession. What I find quite brilliant is that even though I don't have that culture or that familiarity with that professional environment, my close family has always been behind me and let me follow my path.
You call your work Geographer of Form, can you tell us more about this approach?
The Geography of Form focuses on two elements. What geography tells us is this spatial organization of phenomena and events that influence each other. It also defends the idea that a piece—or a form that we draw—exists in its own space and with the surrounding space. So what interests me is this link of otherness that exists. This is the reason why the pieces I create work alone but also in pairs or trios. The Geography of Form also evokes the earth, associated with the notions of territories and landscapes, in connection with the question of soil.
« What really fascinates me is what the material tells us, how to work it and what it brings. »
Today, do you work exclusively on commission or do you find time for personal projects?
I'm very lucky because my work with clay is a very free approach. And the people I work with accompany me in this field of exploration in a fairly open manner. I conduct research and experimentation around the material clay, where one piece leads to another. Thus, my commissioned work is often linked to my personal work. It is born from an encounter, and from a crossroads of reflections and common issues that stamp the new pieces produced.
Your work is very earthy, stimulating the five senses, such as touch. Is there a meditative, almost therapeutic, dimension to what you do?
There is undoubtedly an intuitive approach. Working with clay is an encounter with the material that is based on otherness. Until you get your hands dirty, you don't have that reading, but it's really something very unique. It's also a suspended moment. That's what's so enjoyable about working with clay; you're totally immersed. In this relationship that's created, you're almost behind closed doors, which gives you a real ability to disconnect. It's not what I'm looking for or what interests me per se, but it's something that happens.
What really fascinates me is what the material tells us, how to work it, and what it brings. Touch is, of course, an essential component. And I attach great importance to people touching the pieces, because I think we don't understand them in the same way by looking at them as by touching them. The work of texture, of rendering, such as the principle of enameling, must be understood with touch because there are reliefs and textures that the eyes don't read, or that they read partially. On the question of the senses, I am developing a whole work on beeswax which allows me to add an olfactory dimension. Finally, there is another element that I really like about clay, which is listening to it. Clay is sonorous, a piece acts as a sort of resonance chamber, and what is incredible is that by manipulating clay, sounds appear. I mainly work at low temperatures on firings and the clay retains an open sound, and not a dull sound, more characteristic of high temperature firings.
« There is another element that I really like about the earth, and that is listening to it. »
You recently moved to Marseille. What attracted you to this city?
I have a long-standing attachment to this city. I've been coming here since my adolescence; it's part of my life, and I've long thought it could become a home base. What accelerated my arrival here was the fact that my research work on the earth, called Living Heritage, was partly launched in Morocco at the invitation of the Memori association. As this project grew in scale, the question of territory and its development arose. Marseille made sense to host this project, while Paris was almost becoming a contradiction in terms. The idea was therefore to give even more connection and alignment to a project that was close to my heart. French people were interested in this type of food.
The light is beautiful here, nature is omnipresent, what do they inspire you creatively?
Everything. The light is very pleasant here, and it has a way of modulating spaces and shapes that really interests me. It's very pleasant on a daily basis. And as for nature, it's magical to be so close to a landscape like the Calanques, which is largely made of clay. It's another relationship with the earth that I enjoy.
« It was an opportunity for me to develop more massive pieces, within the scope of the series. »
Can you tell us about your collaboration with By Charlot?
We started with the idea of imagining a transversal project on all the fields of application that interested me, by mixing their approach to the plant and the pot. That's how we imagined a collaboration. It was the opportunity for me to develop more massive pieces, in the field of the series, which is not my usual approach but which interested me in the perspective of thinking about different registers of forms. And above all it allowed me to develop the practice of throwing, which I do not usually practice in my work, and to collaborate with artisan potters whose approach I value.
Of all the pots you've created for By Charlot, if you had to keep just one, which would it be?
If I had to keep just one piece, it would be KAPLA. I like its complexity and the register of form it questions. When I designed it, it was inspired by a coffee table principle, and this whole question of earthenware furniture interests me a lot. It's an area in which I want to develop my research, so for me these are the beginnings of reflection. I'm going outside the usual field in which I intervene. Although I like them all, my favorite is this piece, for its aesthetics and its rendering.
« If I had to keep just one piece, it would be KAPLA. I like its complexity and the register of form it questions. »
Which By Charlot plant most resembles you?
The one that caught my eye was L'Élégante . Firstly because it has a nobility of color, with a green that is very beautiful. But also because it has a certain charisma that I like, and which was the starting point for thinking about certain corresponding pieces.
« The Elegant has a nobility of color, […] a certain charisma that I like »
We visited your workshop, which is currently being finalized. What are your plans for this location?
It's a fairly substantial project, which the two of us are currently developing. Marseille was, for a long time, a land of earthenware. We rightly know Giens and Limoges, or Sèvres as ceramic cities, but we often forget Marseille. So I was really interested in reconnecting with this past, while projecting current and contemporary issues. The idea behind this place is to create a space dedicated to the material clay in the heart of Marseille, with two distinct but complementary entities. On one side, my studio, designed as a space dedicated to research and experimentation. And on the other, a public space open daily for adult classes in the form of workshops led by local ceramists. This place will open its doors next spring.
Finally, can you tell us three small or big joys of your life in Marseille?
There are more of them…. Yet we will have to make a choice! Given the period, I will not talk about restaurants… Yet there are some very good restaurants in Marseille. I would first mention the light, which has a capacity to give a reading of the landscape that is delightful. Obviously the sea and the horizon. And I would also say the very question of know-how, the crafts that are part of the identity of these Provençal lands.
