Fewer Than Five

When Sébastien Nobile looked into how many professional glassblowers remained in the Paris region, the number he found was fewer than five. Not fewer than fifty. Fewer than five. A city of two million people, a country with centuries of glassblowing tradition, and the craft had contracted to almost nothing - kept alive by a handful of people in a studio in the 18th arrondissement who were, in all likelihood, the last to know how.

What he did with that information says something about the kind of person he is.

Sébastien is a Swiss-French mold maker and sculptor who had been dabbling in glassblowing on the side. His main company, Moulage et Patine, creates plaster pieces for museums, boutiques, and private clients around the world - work that requires the same combination of technical precision and aesthetic judgment that good glassblowing demands. He also teaches at Les Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. When he realised what was disappearing, he didn't simply mourn it. He decided, with his wife Valentina, to do something structurally about it.

La Soufflerie began in 2009 as a non-profit organisation whose proceeds go back to the glassblowers - a mechanism designed not just to fund the craft but to keep the craftsmen alive in it. Valentina, an Italian-American who grew up in Paris and holds a master's degree in Art History and Visual Arts from NYU, brought ten years of experience working between New York, Milan, and Paris as an artist and advertising producer. Between them, they had the eyes to know what was worth making and the practical intelligence to make it work.

They started with four vases, formed from recycled glass in the studio in the 18th. They loaded them onto the back of their bikes and rode around Paris, knocking on flower shops. The vases sold out in a day.

What followed, across fifteen years, was a full range of mouth-blown glassware - tumblers, wine glasses, carafes, vases, candleholders - each piece formed entirely by hand, without machinery, the way glass was made for centuries before the industry decided speed was more important than the pontil mark. That mark, a slight roughness on the base left by the glassblower's cane, is now explained on every La Soufflerie piece as a feature rather than a flaw. The presence of this mark indicates that the glass was blown freehand. Which is to say: it was made by a person, not a machine, and you can feel where they held it.

Every model is designed by Valentina and Sébastien themselves, and many are named after the people in their lives - children, friends, team members, clients. Thibaut and Chiara are the children. Anjeanette and Sandra are a friend and a team member. The naming is a habit they explain with characteristic directness: "We like to keep it all in the family because family is what means the most to us." It is a strange and affecting thing, to hold a glass named after someone's child.

The glass itself is coloured not by painting but by mixing pigment directly into the furnace - which means the colour is inside the material, unchangeable, there for good. Framboise. Vert fumé. Dark brown. Olive. Each colour is a small decision made at the point of making, before the object exists, before it is cool enough to hold.

La Soufflerie now supplies retailers across Europe and beyond. Their boutique is at 7 rue de l'Odéon in Paris's 6th arrondissement, open most days of the week. The studio in the 18th is still there. The glassblowers are still working.

The Leopard stocks La Soufflerie's glassware in Australia. 

La Soufflerie is based in Paris, France. Every piece is mouth-blown from recycled glass by hand, without machinery.