Ultramarine Blue Console by Christian Astuguevieille, Contemporary

“Christian Astuguevieille is one of those rare polymaths one encounters in the design world, an occupational dabbler who, resisting pigeonholes, made a name for himself over the past several decades as an artistic director of both fashion and fragrance houses and also as a sculptor, a furniture designer, a maker of jewelry and objects and, not least, as the nose behind the fragrance produced by the Japanese design house, Comme des Garçons.”
Guy Trebay, The New York Times, November 2011

Passionately committed to eliciting sensory reactions through all he creates, in the 1980s Astuguevieille became interested in the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi and in furoshiki – the art of wrapping objects in textile bundles. A natural progression from this departure point set the foundation of his career in designing and making rope-wrapped furniture and objects. He laments the inability of the younger generation to express different sensory experiences, and personally battles to reverse his concern that “…an entire vocabulary of the senses is in danger of being lost.” Astuguevieille’s medium for nurturing this critical faculty is his tactile creations: among them acclaimed natural hemp- and painted cord-covered chairs and chests of drawers, fragrance for select houses such as Lanvin, Hermès, and Nina Ricci, and primitive inspired sculpture. “All of my work is about creating new ways of experiencing the senses, whether it is with perfume or rope”.