Mathilde Carron-Astier de Villatte is a creator of table arts. Some models are inspired by childhood, places, culture or figures. Mathilde's life was immersed in the extraordinary culture of her parents' passion for the art of the 18th century.
While France was discovering vinyl records and platform shoes, Mathilde grew up surrounded by the antiquities that her parents collected and reinterpreted. She discovered the richness of Italian baroque and Roman popular art, most notably, at the Villa Medicis, where she spent two years with her family, her father Pierre Carron being a great painter and sculptor.
Later, her meeting with Georges Jean Clos was fateful. In his workshop she discovered the art of terracotta and soon began a close relationship with this noble material, learning to carve, model, stamp, patinate as she grew into her research. Also at that time, she studied at the "Beaux arts", the famous art school of Paris, where she improved her drawing and won the Academy of Art Schools' David Weill Prize. She graduated from the Art schools of Paris in 1989 and exhibited her work in various galleries of the 6th district of Paris. Fortified by her training, she improved her techniques of stamping, enameling, firing, and built her work around a knowledge of remaking ancestral processes and inventing her own.
On the foundation of the Astier de Villatte* brand, she created a black ceramics line which made a success of the brand and challenge the traditional codes of porcelain. Her work found its force between a rough, outlined way to treat the clay, the barely covering enamel, and a extreme delicacy of the drawing, the detail of a handle, an ear... a language mixed with baroque and country culture born from the places of her childhood. At that point, around fifteen workman-ceramists were working in her workshop, using her personal and unique technique. By the time she left Astier de Villatte to set up her own studio, she had created more than 350 models. Now, she proposes her to lend her know-how to various porcelain producers to create new lines.....
