 Welcome everyone. I'm Sarah Kauffman. I'm the head of the product design and decorative arts department and it gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you here tonight to share one of my passions which is good design and great craftsmanship and self-welfare. I also wanted to tell you that I was able to pursue this passion in Paris last May when thanks to Irina Abdelmala the cultural attaché head of performing in visual arts department and Dara Théchard of the program officer of the visual arts architectural design of the cultural services of the French embassy in here in New York. I was able to visit a number of designers and creators and see how much the art of savoir-faire is alive and well in France. I should define savoir-faire often translated as know-how. It's really far more than that. It's a skillful working in techniques and media not only knowing how but having a level of skill and overall view of how these materials and what you're working in at a level that is rarely attained. This is clearly something that France has excelled in for centuries. I've had a long specialization in 17th and 18th century decorative arts where it is still very much a given that France reigns supreme and what's wonderful as you will see tonight that there's good reason to want to have American designers people interested in design from all excuse me parts of the world see what is going on in France. I hope that this program in conjunction with a series of programs the French embassies cultural services have launched as part of we design in this May will enable the people to see what can be done with traditional and very skill contemporary techniques in this new design idiom. Some of you may have attended a lecture in the Morse series here at Cooper Hewitt in October that was about historic marketry. Now we will hear that it is a living art. Excuse me. Valerie Malta Bayer brings to us from France thanks to the French embassies and the example of how design thinking and collaborating can work in a contemporary setting. Her firm, even Imére Malta, works with top-level practitioners of Saint-Noir-Faire. Valerie has been able to launch series of commissions that she creates after a year of careful thinking and choosing from top-level craftsmen to execute designs that evolve from both concept and media the media that she has chosen. She then works another year to ensure that the final signs match the concept and the execution of these pieces and that of necessity are very limited editions or sometimes unique pieces because of all this care and attention. So they are not shown in Faire's but through her studio but the word is out and she's well known to people who care about true appreciation of top quality execution in design. So with that I will turn the stage over to Valerie Malta Bayer for her presentation both on what I hope will be first her works of what she's working on now currently engaged in as well as before she goes into further detail on her use of marketry and to explain her working process. We will then see a video about one of the pieces in this series before we discuss her work and open it up for your questions and answers. So without further ado, back to you. So dear friends, thank you all for coming. My name is Valerie Malta Bayer as Sarah said. I am the founder and artistic director of Emery Malta, the studio I created eight years ago. I am delighted to be here tonight and I would like first to sign the Cooper Hewitt, Karen Bowman, Sarah Coffin, Susan Brown and their team and the French Embassy, Benedict de Molore, Rima Abdul-Marak and the Rotecha. We believe that Emery Malta occupies a very special niche in the furniture world as a genre of art, craft and design. We create art furniture for everyday use. We begin by choosing a material and a technique. We invite our designer to see in terms of art. Each piece is like a sculpture that you can use and live with every day. We choose natural high quality material and for their beauty and durability. We explore the most effective ways of working with this material, extracting both very old and extremely new techniques. Most of the time we end up revolutionizing all techniques by inventing new ways to work with the material. That is probably why we are reviewing it as part of the French history of craft by French museums that buy or furniture and give us commissions. For example, recently we were approached by Tapestry de Busson to develop a small edition of furniture and composing Tapestry. The first pieces of each edition is bought by a museum of the Tapestry de Busson and the rest is being sold under your name. We are also going to produce a line of furniture for the Mobidiae National, which is one of the designers of the Jean-Marie Madorge. The Mobidiae National is a department within the Ministry of Culture that commissions furniture and decorative arts for the French state. They approached us because they knew that we would be the best equipped to incorporate in online all the craft that have been the whole make of French suburb fair for centuries. So we work slowly. On average we took us two years to complete the project. Every two years we select one material that becomes the stone of our collection. We have worked with Marble for a collection called Father Marble. We work with laser for a collection called Deep Skin and we work with glass for the Monic Maze collection. We have worked with wood for specially beauty, sleeping beauty, marketry revisited, a name we choose because we felt that we have woken up the old craft of marketry. In this video we will see briefly two samples of our previous collection before we are going on the whole marketry collection. If you wanted to stay, operate the computer with... Oh, sorry, sorry, okay, you'll have this quick. Okay, so this is the way we work. We choose a steam of designer after we choose a technique and a materials and we are going to work during two years with the designer. The first years is on a draw. We start by a lot of sketch, a lot of story. We are speaking about movie, about emotion and when we feel that the sketch is perfect, we are going in 3D, in 3D drawing. All the designers come from the industrial world so they are used to work with machines. They are doing coffee machines. They are doing casserole and everything and I bring them to the world of art so we think that the furniture has to look a spiritual. So it's a long process. We are talking and talking during one years and go and back and go and back with the draw and after we are going to find the right craft man and so we work with the craft man and the material, very good, good material that we can find. So that explains how we work. I work with the designer during one year after we are going to see the manufacturer, the craft man and there is a lot of etchage during these two years to at the end, we hope to find the right pieces. So that's the first collection, the feather marble. So we work with a really new technique that's the Robo 5ax machine and we work with this 5ax machine to make the marble as thin as we can. So this is one plate. This plate has been bought by the Gnab in France and this is a stool. It's one block of marble. I went to choose and carry out the marble I want to have and all the pieces are in 12 samples, 12 in black and 12 in white marble, carol marble. This is the second collection. It was with leather, deep, we call this collection skin leather and so it looks like living land. I think when I see the draw I need to dream. The drawing needs to appear to me until the draw, if the draw don't appear to me, don't make me dream, I don't go in production. So this bouquet, we went to see the seller of leather, the one who can have a lot of color because every piece is in one color. The other one is going to be different blue and gray and green and we choose the color one after one and this has been very very difficult to do it, to make it because it's wood, foam and after to stick perfectly well the leather, it has been so so complicated and we probably studied the project during six months to be able to do it. So you can see how, so I think this is like a sculpture also because I like to see them, four of them like that. I feel like I am like in front of a sculpture and the opposite the this piece, the name of this piece is called victory. So we use a leather like you can see and you would like a box boxing leather and so we need to do these pieces to have the leather very well scratched. At the end we finish to put the leather during three or four days in the water to be able to scratch it. We need to be three, the craft man has to be three to be able to scratch it as he has to after we pick it and after they they throw it very very best way that you can and I really want it that you feel for boxing boxing. This was the collection that we studied the glass so here we made each each light is a different shape with it was very difficult to stick it because it's a round it's a ball so when you put a stick it's very difficult to so by the ultraviolet light we stick it and so all of them has different shape and you feel like you can see a cloud or a grip of leather. Here you have the crystal can that's the name so when you see a light like that we use three different craft man in glass. So the first one is like the neon or the what you can use in the medicine medical company and it was really hard to do I will explain you after and you after you have a second a specialist of glass the one who blow the globe and the third one is the one you will make the how you call that how you say that you know it to make it. Pardon? No not polish when you make the facet. Oh you know the one with the facet of the globe so because you can see very well that it has the all the globe is faceting so it has been very cause because the globe is it's blood so it's really heavy and obviously the neon light or the neon the glass which is the borosilicate glass is that we studied for probably two or three months how to equilibrate the the light because it could fall obviously so we study exactly how to now you can have music you can have everything but the first time I show it it was at my house and the car probably the driver drives too fast and just the vibration made the light go down and we probably had two three or four times we have to remake it and at the end now it's working you get the music and you can drive and put the cycle everything but all the all that the thing we did we did everything that has a story because it was we we want to do something very well very nice and we don't study it's it's easy to do we don't care of that we don't see if it's if it's expensive we don't take care if it's easy to do we do it until this so you can see the borosilicate and here so now we are talking what we are for salar choose three because usually when we make a collection a collection is five pieces so I just let you see two pieces by collection for the past one and for the new one I just so we call it living beauty because marketry was completely not anymore used in fact and we we try to make it revive it so this is the five so you can see a dining table the dining table the top of the dining table a coffee table a buffet a coffee table and a bench so my suggestion for this because a designer needs to have to have a convenience to work as well as he has to so I ask that we I want to use mad varnish at the opposite as usually the marketry has been done in the past century and so we because we use the the mad varnish the difficulties has to be very what you had to be very difficult because the mad varnish you can't you can't hide the mistake here and and I want mad varnish and like that you can use the marketry if you if you buy a marketry furniture of the past century you can drink you can put water on it you can put wine and I want it to be used every day use so we we use the very actual varnish so like now you can if you have a dinner and you put candles on it or you put wine you just have to take a moist point and you can clean it as well as a non-usual thing so Sarah choose to specially focus on the illusion table on the cloud in chest and the black so we are going to start by cloud in chest so for this I I should I break for you I don't know so I have all the simpers of wood if you want to see after we had to find 17s difference of kind of wood to have the right color because I did not do not want absolutely to find to to to have tinted wood so everything is so natural we have to find also wood with the same vein so it's good we have probably almost 3000 pieces of wood and all the pieces because you will see so all this is all the pieces of wood that you have here in reality and what we use for this one the the marketry is like a puzzle and you put all the 3000 pieces of wood and you have to repolish it and all the obviously all the letters correspond at of a wood so for a wood so this is the way we cut so for this table we cut as the cutting was done before and you can see we before to glue it on the on the on the surface thank you the marketry is done so the difficulties for this for this buffet as well that we we really want to have a very sophisticated buffet so we we went to we we asked for the diamonds facet and you can see that you can open completely the door to have to have a better access and it's because of that the surface has been very difficult to do so the carapace has been done in with a with a robot five axe machine so we need when you do a buffet like that we need to go to five different artisans first one is the one who is going to work with robo because you have a lot of angles and angles like that is very difficult to put marketry on it so we so we everything has to be very perfect if not this won't glue perfectly well so so we we we did that with the first so the first craft man was the five axe machine the second one was the craft man and it was a it was a pixel eyes you can see that it was a pixel eyes cloud suspended on a hunt so the feet of the lake looks at the hunt so it's like a moonlight in an ebony night spent in a turner wood so we had to see also a turner wood and after to find the right polisher and the right varnish so it's a very very long process to do it to find a 17th color of wood the right one and after to see all these people to do this kind of on buffet so you see all the so the blacksmith blues is a so it's like a sculpture you can see two feet it's with metal the feet are in metal when you are above you can see only one of them so it's a it's look fresh something fresh here something very light and the the the same here so for the first it's the first time that we use a tinted wood because we really want we really want to have a black tinted as the same black as the white ebony so this tinted wood as it was on the napoleon the third is a pair wood tinted in black and all the difficulties in this in this table was to to be able with the pieces of wood to fill the sensuality of the snake and how you move because if you just put the wood like that and you don't think how you are going to put the the pieces of wood you can if you can't feel as the the snake moving and crawling into the house it's french it's english my daughter is buffing so i'm afraid uh no it's the no i will i will let you see here it's the we have the chance i look everywhere to find the right uh white ebony and we find this white ebony after we we we it's not it's like peace and the peace that we put and like that to just can feel the the the wear of the snake is moving the the the table the yes yes yes the bench is where yes yes yes so you can see how it has been done so we we make the the draw and after this is what on what the the market craft man is going to work and uh this is where we are so the where we see the black is where we put the black uh uh tinted wood but at the end sometimes we we don't feel the fruity of the snake so we had to change a few pieces just to have to feel that the snake is moving perfectly well so here you can see better how it's done and uh well it's look like for it's look like a sculpture i live with all of this thing and i feel very happy so the illusion table uh it was another problem is we use uh i will let you see uh under charlotte bull was used also the uh bro cooper bros and alivina but all the time in a flat uh flat surface and at the opposite of her of us we it was on a round on a 45 degrees on a circle so it was such a difficulties to do and i will have a little movie after to let you see how we did it and because it's obviously it's not the volume it's not circular in the view everything is flat it's an illusion table you can clear that it was a cylinder but it's not a silent it's only flaxing and we had such a problem because when the burnish accept the cooper it doesn't accept aluminum the one who accept aluminum and cooper doesn't accept uh uh the bros and when everything was done it doesn't because ebony is also of such a difficult wood it's a very strange wood it doesn't uh move like there's a wood and so we have to polish we burnish polish we burnish and i think uh i was ready to die and so we unique piece but no it's only all the pieces of aluminum are 12 pieces so but we normally know we are going to know we know how to use it we are going to do it by five axe machine and the the the little movie is going to let you see how and no you we have no anymore problem because we can put the pieces we polish the pieces we burnish it after we put the the other one we polish and polish it and after we put the printer on the table so and the movie it's going to explain you better than i so we take the all the material that they were they were used to and so probably now we can see the movie and that's why now uh so as i told you now because uh we were uh we did something pretty very nice with uh with uh market tree that's why after it like this kind of song when came to see my my time say okay very please let us uh please do five pieces for for new museum like this kind of song and keep the rest of the edition okay well thank you for that really very much and i now have a few questions so that for you and then we'll open it up i thought maybe um that we can actually have the sample pieces out and do you want to get one of the um the snake and also the the camouflage uh right but you i just want to draw the people's attention that when you look at this if you look carefully you see that there are those exact shapes that you saw on both the paper oh i should be holding this sorry you'll see the exact shapes uh that you saw on the paper and you can see how it's done what you didn't see really was this extraordinary ability to go over an angle which is incredibly complex you will notice that there's not just a line in the in the shape where they start again so that there'd be an open crack all the pieces actually go over the angle um but this you will also be able to count all those 17 different pieces of different types of wood but as Valerie mentioned for those of you who are familiar with bull or other work he did work in pewter copper and brass inlays and that was the fascinating thing that you had a completely modern piece of furniture that used exactly the materials that somebody used in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and and since then in a more uh traditional style but very much updated so this ability to think outside the box uh to take the materials and do something completely new with it um is wonderful and a very important art that has existed over centuries so i think this is a very beautiful um piece that i just keep in mind about closer look there anything so should we kind of see it's not that um that's all i think okay so you need it for but no okay that's okay we'll find out no i think maybe well i know but i think the taste they take need to the take need to have it off so i love when you space so so i just from my point of view i think it's an extraordinary concept the whole way you've then created this firm and i wonder how you found the first makers and designed the people that you worked with in your first project and how you went about finding them now i'm sure they find you and you find them and oh and before i get you to answer that i just want to say to everybody i did get to go to the mobility agnostic now so i know not only because opus song has been famous for its tapestries and so forth for 400 years or 500 years but also because the mobility agnostic now not only is the repository of all the furniture owned from former royal palaces and government offices it also has great artisans of sapphire fair and they have people restoring both tapestries or textile work as well as furniture for maloo and so forth so for them they are also involved in commissioning new work for both government offices and state and you know special displays and so forth but so for them to come to someone and say we want you to create when they already have quite a team of creators there they're made that's really they've mainly been involved in working with outside people and some of their artisans who repair and keep in condition their old pieces so this is a but they have some very modern pieces but this is a whole new level of involvement in contemporary design for them to really do this so getting back to how you started and how you found the people to work with at the beginning it was so odd because i was a no no so i was already all unfortunately i have a lot of friends so everywhere do you know who is able to do you know and then after you are going to the craftsmanship and see if they are able to do what you think and so it's a long way it's a long way and as you say no now i have the chance everybody wants to work with him and have that so promise me for a call but when you the question i have is did you have an idea first about wanting to work with marvel or leather or did you did you just have some design ideas and no i think at the beginning i think i i i love a very very nice home and i think when you buy i prefer to live with two or three furniture than to live with 10 or 15 furniture but i think it's very i prefer to buy a nice clothes than 100 trousers i prefer to have two nice three nice trousers and i think it's the same thing for furniture and i really are going to visit every day massage and i have i love to have the feeling of to do something beautiful so it's the way i need as i told you when i see a croquis i need to dream in front of the food until i don't dream and after if the croquis make me dream when we are going after in 3d if i don't feel the same thing as i feel at the beginning with the croquis we we we go back to the to the croquis and we try to understand why we don't have the same feeling in the 3d okay but you're starting with the sketch but i i just want to go from there but you already have drawn something and i'm saying when you so what are you deciding that you want to do let's say lighting this time or furniture or an object or at the beginning i want to work with marble right okay because i think marble or because marble at the eight years away was the first collection was really unused and i think it was a shame to have no more marble in her room and it's true we just had to to find a new way because so the new way was to have a very thinning marble and so i we went to see the new the company and it was just only one company at that time was all the robots to work in this kind of thinning auger and that's extraordinary with the table piece because the second slide we saw because that was obviously a very large solid piece of marble that you then cut a very fairly large piece out of the inside but uh was it all so the after the robot cut it did you um is it then a matter of polishing and oh yes all the all the work even if the robot uh has a table illusion there is a lot of work by hand a lot a lot so when where did you meet the people that whom you selected for the marketry works for this project in fact the marketry in front doesn't exist anymore for a new for the new furniture so they are they are here for restore restore so we have to work with them and uh when usually for all the work which we began the craft man all the time said no it's not possible so it's the first sentence and we can hear and uh and uh at the end they are coming and they have to come in all story and uh and uh and uh and uh at the end they are very proud and they why they like us at the end is because they think that they progress a lot even if the people are very old because usually the people are the craft man we are working with except the one who's working with robot he was the one of nearly 78 even nearly 80 but at the end they they they are 20 years younger after the work because they feel so glad and proud of them that's wonderful it does make me wonder if pool didn't originally actually do what you have figured out to do which is to lacker the I mean put the protective coating that responds to the different surfaces on separately and then do a varnish over the whole thing because I can't see how his would have worked unless he did the same thing yes because the the the chinese varnish you can you can hide all the mistakes when the wood is not perfectly well you the varnish can move all the mistakes so when we decide to do it in the mad varnish we do not know we do not know how travel we are going to but it's wonderful because you do get the time when you see those pieces that you really do see that it gives you so much better feeling of the woods that were used than not a shiny skating like yes it's more natural and you can appreciate much better the wood yes and certainly you've used a very great number of them so of the other media in which you've worked which do you find especially satisfying and also which seem to have been most popular with your clients all of them so people know it's true because uh since the beginning the muses are decorative all the knapp bought several pieces of each piece of each collection and uh and it's exactly for people in the market for some of them are going to prefer the demolition from other one even if everybody has the same the same it's art and poetic i think and but you can prefer one of the other but i think all the collection has a lot of success and from we are most of your purchasers from france or have you uh have other people been able to see your work uh given that you don't do fairs themselves uh it's more uh people not began to to know so i don't want to do any fair because i think when the fair you need to be to have a culture and it's quite sophisticated and i think people who want to have something very rare they can find a man and we don't have to make a fair everybody can buy and so that's why i prefer to do that fair and people are coming at my place and uh and no people start to know we have some american people we have some european people it's becoming so i think now we like to turn it over to the audience to um ask some questions or have any comments from your part or if anything you don't understand feel free and i think um susannah there will has a microphone and if you could speak into the microphone then everybody will be able to hear the question the question is did you understand me well yes would you pick your designers how do you pick your designers at the beginning i i took and i still still like that i think designer usually unknown because like that i can work with them more quietly and slowly because uh as i told you a collection it's two years time and so i think uh when at the beginning i talk with them a lot and when i appreciate them because we are going to have a certain time to be together if they are dreaming if they are the sense of of art like me when we speak and if they and know that i can move them and they are able to take a brief and to understand how machine like five backs works that's why i work with the industrial designer because they are able to understand seeing they are able to make me three days design drawing like that i can feel until the end how it's look and if i have uh if i have uh a doubt of the shape i we we did it in form and i live uh in the middle of my living room uh shape of form and like that and we're turning during one month around and at the end i know that if we put 10 something less it would be more light or more so you how many designers that do you work with on any given project every project is five designer and how how do they is it one working with one part of the project how do you divide up who does what is one designer oh i see and i follow like that five designer and i have one at the opposite i have at the beginning i work only because i was new so i work one designer with one piece and for all the pieces with the same craft man so now i'm i know pretty well my work fortunately eight years after so i can work with five designer and five craft man at the same time so but it's a bit and so do you start with a uh handmade sketch and then go into the computer generated yes all the time right and i am probably because i worked a long time in the animation animation yes movie animation so i know i can read perfectly well drawing and i love drawing so and i as i told you the drawing at the beginning it doesn't uh it's a shame when i spoke with sarah i i i said it's it's too bad because i don't bring to you the sketch but at the beginning so the sketch doesn't uh you could not imagine the sketch and how it is after it's just a question of feeling sometimes it's just a blue like that and something like that i said oh it could be a light what do you sing and we speak and we speak and and for the time for for example for obison tapestry i uh we are picking a lot uh using a ring of the lord lord of the rings because of uh how the tapestry can make you feel good as a little cabin uh event um so that's but tell me one final question for me and audience and that because i meant to ask you this before how does your work in animation and in film work and so how do you think that impacts your design process i think it's exactly the same thing you start by an idea and after you you build everything everything you start with a little point and after you write a movie it's the same thing we write a story and with this story what is going to be the furniture and it's exactly the same process and that's why for me it was quite easy to to go to expert at the questions just to improve my image trying to be okay i have a question so it's okay so i'm just gonna say it's so interesting how you kind of take in on each project through the material so i'm wondering what material are you thinking of in the future but as i told you we're the next one is going to with all the tapestry that we saw to make furniture with tapestry so we just start we just finished after one year we just finished the drawing in 3d so now we are the step we are making symbols of the of the tapestry and i think we should start the production in september and so because obviously as that because they just open a new museum in opus so and they want to and said so they said to remember that please do what you want with the designer you want and but we please do something and they don't say anywhere and they are all of them for the moment they are so happy and hopefully in the end also and it's because now it's the expertise of ibera malta it's perfectly we can move with all the craftsmanship that's why the mobility nationality came to us to create a line that's the desk and the videotech for the ministry and the embassy will those involve any of the marketry techniques or yes so yes marketry we put also tapestry we put everything because they have the mobility nationality is a is a little village in the it's a town in paris it's a huge monument and you have all the craftsmanship in this monument so and they just buy five axe machine for wood so no we know exactly how to move with marketry and so they said it's exactly where we have to go and that's why it became to me they asked and uh just when i take my plane to come here they said okay but are you going to work with their craftsmen yes with their craftsmen what do you think about the the over use of marble copper brass i mean all this material today in design and art will you put it would it make you move forward forward something different or to francais who's speaking english is so hard the question is like what do you think about the over use of the of this kind of material you are using you used before like the novel the copper all this kind of material we used to see too many times now i think in the in the design in art so so what over use so what do you think of that of this fact and also at the beginning i prefer to work with non-material that you can because i think when i had the chance to live to my grandparents home to my parents home with a really nice furniture and i think for me it's a shape to to throw it somewhere when you 20 years after i think you can make your children inherit your furniture so for me it's really important to do something so i went to the real material because i do know beyond i work also with uh food or the mob and everything uh and i am not again that's all but i think for the moment i i feel better if i work with the bronze and the copper and all this very very well known material and i know that this material won't won't hear too beat will last will last and for us it's to do something with all this material something very contemporary contemporary and i think the cloud pixelized clothes is very contemporary patterns the snake even in the 30s it was very known and the snake was very not at that time we do it in black and white like a tattoo could be the bench it's like at the the cabinet maker when they did something at the 18th century you have a secret drawer and it's the same thing at the even at the both bottom of the bench if you push it you discover a cupboard at the both bottom of the so we use all the new technique but with and with the patterns with the shape i think everything is very new you could not find a a stool like that before but it's with the old and they were poor material poor material and could it happen that somebody comes and orders a specific piece of furniture yes we we we also do do that and we specific ordering yes yes if somebody came to us and say we want to have something really extraordinary we are able to do it and it's it's exactly what ask the mobiles and they say very please create it for us a line of and know they know that we can move and we we start by sketch as you left that we present them the 3d because if we really do a very well 3d you feel like you are exactly in front of the of the pieces do you mean your your sample pieces or your no when you start by the sketch after we studied the sketch you make your proposal the 3d the 3d the 3d drawing the 3d drawing and after with the 3d drawing you really feel like you were it was it's a picture of the so the you know exactly what you are going to happen that's what we did for the so it's a wonderful I think that's a wonderful explanation of exactly how new technology and old tech old traditional methods can be combined to create something that uses traditional techniques and new ones for a very contemporary object so thank you very that's wonderful and thank you all for coming