Stories

Marion Mailaender is a Marseilles-based designer who likes to seize on cultural codes, customs and popular forms. She brings them together to create poetic, evocative and highly narrative objects. She uses everyday details that may seem insignificant, but which nonetheless form the basis of a memory to be reactivated. Marion questions our relationship with space and takes a tender look at what she calls architectural moments.

“I learned to dye and I liked it, I love creating!”

Raphaël Sawadogo has already lived more than ten lives. In wood craftship, in certification, abroad, he worked in many different jobs, sometimes very well paid, until becoming an employee of a weaving workshop. “I was the boss’s right-hand man, a long-time friend, I helped him in particular with administrative management.” Then his friend tells him of an imminent departure to the United States and the closure of the workshop. “I was in danger!”. It was four years ago. He decides to learn dyeing, and it’s a revelation. “I really like it, and it provides a living for my family.”

At his side, Noëlie, his wife, creates and weaves the prototypes. The couple is settled in the courtyard of their house in Cissin, Ouagadougou. A 10-meter loom is there, carrying the threads of the creation in progress.

When Captain Thomas Sankara came to power in the mid-1980s, Faso Dan Fani became a national symbol and a promoter of local know-how. Determined to promote the emancipation of women through work and the development of national production, Thomas Sankara issued a decree requiring his civil servants to wear Faso Dan Fani. “Wearing Faso Dan Fani is an economic, cultural and political act of defiance against imperialism”, said Thomas Sankara, whose political inspiration was essentially based on communism and anti-colonialism.

Although the daily use of this loincloth fell into disuse after Sankara’s death and the implementation of a much more liberal policy, the Faso Dan Fani has always remained the basis for the production of festive and ceremonial clothing, with the Naba – village chiefs – wearing it for every occasion. The first of these, the Mogho Naba, emperor of the Mossi, always wore a Faso Dan Fani when appearing in public or receiving audiences in his palace in Ouagadougou.

The revolution that took place in 2014, which ousted the dictator in place since the death of Sankara, raised an incredible wind of patriotism among Burkinabè. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, President democratically elected at the end of 2015, brought the port of Faso Dan Fani up to date, himself wearing it at each of his appearances, including on official trips abroad. If the use of Dan Fani has not been made compulsory this time, it is however very favored. Each political demonstration sees the statesmen dressed in the traditional outfit woven in this heavy cotton, and the so-called “March 8” loincloth, published each year in honor of World Women’s Day for Equal Rights, and traditionally offered by all employers to their employees, is now from Faso Dan Fani.

Robust and natural, the Faso Dan Fani has become the symbol of a Nation proud of its roots and its know-how.

After Ambre Jarno, the founder and Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance first met in Paris in 2018, they discovered that their respective projects, Maison Intègre and Made in Situ, had a lot in common. Ambre invited then Noé to think about a possible collaboration.

Fifteen years earlier, Noé had visited the Bandiagara cliffs in Mali, another region of West Africa that is very hard to reach nowadays for security reasons. There, he had discovered ladders made of one single piece of wood, a common object in West Africa, particularly in the Dogon and Lobi cultures. The iconic Y shape was the first inspiration that came to Noe’s mind, with the idea of designing a sculptural lamp. “The idea of using only one material really spoke to me. I was impressed by the purity of the Y shape. It’s a special shape mostly because of its fragility: there’s only one leg, but the two arms facing upward and leaning against a surface make it extremely stable”, Noé says.

She invited him to take an immersive trip inside Burkina Faso, knowing that Noé would be sensitive to the beauty of local crafts, their associated know-how and their strong materiality. She invited him to take a long-winded journey in Burkina Faso. She also showed him images of the quintessential shapes found in Tiebélé, a traditional Kassena village located in the south of Burkina Faso, another red zone impossible to visit nowadays but which Ambre had had the chance to discover a few years earlier. These images, as well as other elements ever-present in the Burkinabe culture, such as the PALABRE chair, constituted the inputs that Noé received.

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance is a designer working across a vast array of crafts and materials to create different pieces depicting his own nature-driven narrative. His approach to design is grounded on his innate ability to combine simplicity and an honest desire to create pieces that last. From architecture to furniture, from interiors to bespoke collections, Noé has a unique sense of respect for the past even when his eyes are on the future.

In late 2018, Wallpaper magazine invited us to collaborate with Brendan Ravenhill to create a piece for the Wallpaper Handmade exhibit, « Love. » Together we created a lamp that would embody the theme of love. The resulting design is a lamp in two parts that engage in a relationship with each other. One part is a light source that cradles a bulb in a brass shell, the other is a stand alone reflector that captures and bounces the light back in a soft reflected glow.

A model of the piece is made out of beeswax. In Burkina Faso, it can be very difficult to handle the wax due to the heat. The country is close to the Sahel region and the temperature can reach 48°C.

In the case of a series of the same object, a plaster mold is built up on the wax model to easily replicate the model. In the case of unique pieces, plaster is not needed. Drains and air-vents are added to enable the melted wax to flow. These same channels will be used to cast the molten metal.

The wax model is wrapped up in many layers of a mix of clay and horse dung. The whole is secured with metal wires and then baked for a few hours depending of the piece’s proportions.

Once the clay has hardened and the wax melted, the melted wax is evacuated and put aside for reuse.
The wax area is now empty and ready for bronze to be poured in.

Bronze is made from recycled metals such as taps, screws and bolts. They are heated to about 1200°C in a melting pot dug into the ground. When the fusion occurs, the bronze is poured in the clay mold. The metal is left to cool and harden in the clay moulds for about an hour and a half.

When cooled, the mold is extracted and the clay is broken away from the bronze. The wires are removed and the surface is cleaned-up. If needed, some repairs are done. The lamp’s surface is then finished for the team in France to add the special finishes.

The final finishing stage and the patinas are provided by our affiliated workshop in the south of France.