Séverina Lartigue

As a young girl, Séverina Lartigue visited a shop looking for fabric flowers to put on a dress and was instantly mesmerised by the world she had stepped into. She bought three violets that she still has to this day. Séverina later started to create her own fabric flowers, combining her affinity for textiles with a long-held fascination with nature and botany. Over the years the artisan has been lucky enough to work with several masters of the craft, who taught her techniques and knowledge that would help Séverina become a master herself. Her workshop, founded in Normandy in 1998, was awarded "Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant" (Living Heritage Company) distinction by the French government, a mark of recognition of its excellent savoir-faire.

Séverina Lartigue specialises in the multiple ancestral techniques needed to create artificial flowers from silk. Originally, each stage of creation would have corresponded to a unique profession. The particularity of her workshop is that she undertakes each step of production herself, from conception to creation and finally to the sale. Today, Séverina is the last independent luxury artificial flower maker in France. Her work is closely linked to the tradition of artificial flower making as the instruments she uses are no longer made and are becoming hard to find. Therefore, she collects them and is building up her inventory of tools.

Séverina Lartigue often collaborates with artisans who are masters of other techniques, such as featherworker Eric Charles-Donatien or bow maker Eric Grandchamps. While at Homo Faber 2018, Séverina met writer Lucien d'Azay, who was writing a piece on William Morris. This sparked a conversation and contributed to her collection “L’art de nuance”, which she presented in October 2019 in Tokyo. Despite being well anchored in the past, her work remains innovative through constant adaptation to its contemporary context. “From the moment that we create contemporary things we inevitably innovate compared to what could have been done 50 years ago.”

Pattern of Crafts Exhibition