Claire Lange & Lucie Roy

Claire Lange and Lucie Roy are glassmakers who met 15 years ago in a small village in eastern France, where they learned their craft. After experiences in Spain and Italy, they co-founded a cooperative in France’s Lorraine region, before launching Atelier Ilaké in the Hautes-Alpes, in 2020. Since then, their work has centred around tableware with emphasis on the natural world. Motifs borrowed from the wild plants they collect and photograph in their Alpine surroundings are incorporated into glass plates and cloches.

Projects, often for custom pieces, are developed in consultation with a chef. These collaborations enrich the creative process and transform each object into something unique, imagined for a particular cuisine, dish or gesture.

Claire Lange and Lucie Roy are interested in the subtle links between the seasons in Japanese culture, and particularly in dining; by the way each piece of tableware is chosen in relation to the particular poetry of a time of year; and by the harmony between dishes, where each balances the other, and no single taste dominates.

Every two weeks, they would like a chef to give them two seasonal dishes that will be part of a kaiseki ryôri dinner. This traditional menu is composed of a dozen small dishes, served in a precise order. Each dish is crafted from only the freshest, seasonal ingredients and presented with subtly and refinement.

Firstly, Lange and Roy will imagine an item of tableware for each dish and each chef. Secondly, they will discover and sketch local plants, accompanied by growers or harvesters. Thirdly, they will study how nature is represented, season by season, in utensils by visiting kyo-yaki porcelain, lacquer and textile studios.