Refonte

Picking the gesture up where it stopped, and carrying it on. From 16 to 19 September, Ardi unveils its first public exhibition at Galerie Anne-Julien, rue de Seine, in Paris.

The original moulds sleep at the workshop, silent. To recast them today, to give them form again, is to affirm, beyond an exercise in memory, that expression and gesture remain true, whatever the era that beholds them. Refonte, the name of this first exhibition, presents five inspiring pieces born of these moulds: Colin and L'Assommoir by Ronan Bouroullec, Jojo and La Tour Prend Garde by Kristian Gavoille, and Bron-Ir-Or by Éric Jourdan. We have added a sixth, without a mould, whose sculptural power expresses this rebirth in every respect. Le Cri, Pucci de Rossi's iconic candelabra, was conceived within the foundry itself, with a unique, raw texture, a symbol of the creative collaboration that once united Ardi and its designers.

Jojo is a bottle opener, a jovial little figure leaning on a café counter. It looks simple. It was not: the first examples, made entirely of aluminium, gave way under the pressure of the caps. A tiny steel tooth had to be slipped in. La Tour Prend Garde is an ashtray shaped like a castle tower, the wall Kristian Gavoille raised between himself and the cigarette.

Refonte also shows what is seldom seen: the other side of the scenes, the workshop, the tools, the processes. For an Ardi piece is above all the fruit of exceptional mastery and know-how. To discover the foundry where it is born; to feel the sand, the steel, the molten aluminium; to admire the hand that polishes: these are precisely the unchanging techniques that have fascinated us.

Refonte finally reveals what will exist tomorrow: rediscovered furniture, still at the prototype stage and designed for small series. A way of affirming that the story of Ardi is still being written, in the same workshop, with the same standards.

Servantez II and Limbo were barely distributed. Almost absent from the archives, these two pieces are relics of the house: their history had to be traced, the elements pieced together, before they could be brought back. Eugène Brunelle, an American designer who, like many others, came through the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts (ENSAD), drew for Ardi at the same time. As the originals are extremely rare, we made these prototypes in direct collaboration with the designers, with new suppliers, to adapt them to today's market.

The re-editions are only a first chapter. Ardi will now publish young designers, on new pieces. It is what the house did in its early days: open the workshop to young creators, such as Ronan Bouroullec, then a student of Kristian Gavoille. "We dared everything, we refused nothing," Kristian Gavoille recalls. Ardi wants that space to exist again. To take up the gesture is also to take up that one.