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Porcelain in Haute Couture Style. A Master Class with Thalia Reventlow

Workshop  /  Making   Technics  /  10 Mar 2025  -  14 Mar 2025
Published: 11.02.2025
Ateliers du Bât d'Argent
Place
44 rue Conti in Pézenas
34120 -  Pézenas
FRANCE
Mail:
e.feliuE-mailagglohm.net
n.jaafarE-mailagglohm.net
Phone:
04 67 26 94 12
Management:
Emilie Feliu, Nadia Jaafar
DEADLINE: 10/03/2025
Porcelain in Haute Couture Style. A Master Class with Thalia Reventlow.
Thalia Reventlow Atelier
Photo: © Emmanuel Perrin

© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.

Intro
Learn to prepare porcelain textile sheets and shape them in a Haute Couture-inspired technique. This process allows for both large-scale solid pieces and delicate, translucent micro-pieces, facilitating the shaping of porcelain, a notoriously difficult material.

For Thalia Reventlow, who invented and refined this revolutionary process, it has enabled greater finesse and impressive volumes.
 

Version française - French version      View / hide description

The first "porcelain paper" I saw was exhibited at the National Ceramics Museum in Limoges in 1988. It was an ultra-thin sheet created in the Sèvres Museum workshops by the painter Jean-Pierre Béranger, who generously introduced me to the technique. I was stunned by its delicate quality, but assembling the sheets was incredibly difficult.

At the same time, I had signed a contract with Bernardaud, a Limoges porcelain manufacturer, where I focused on designing models for traditional industrial slip-casting. It was a completely different world.

In 2007, I took a paper clay workshop with Charles Essautier. At first, I wasn't convinced. After years of working with noble but temperamental porcelain, I wasn't drawn to this muddy, cotton-like material that smelled like swamp water and lost precision due to cellulose. But eventually, I embraced its possibilities—it adheres without cracking, deforms less, and can even be worked dry. Not to mention its strength once dry, which makes handling large, thin pieces much easier before firing.

Then came the breakthrough: I cast porcelain-paper onto fabric surfaces to create "porcelain sheets" as thick as felt. My training in plaster molding workshops in Limoges proved invaluable. Now I could cut them with scissors, eliminating the blurred effect and restoring the beloved porcelain qualities.

Suddenly, creating very large porcelain pieces—previously deemed nearly impossible—became feasible.
I hope you will enjoy experimenting with this hybrid technique and material, and that it will spark your creativity…

/ Thalia Reventlow


Program
  • Introduction to "paper clay": A brief history, porcelain properties, and the innovative porcelain-textile technique developed by Thalia Reventlow.
  • Designing original models imagined by each participant.
  • Pattern-making: Creating cardboard models, cutting and assembling porcelain-textile sheets.
  • Shaping and forming the models in porcelain-textile.
  • Single firing at 1280°C for smaller models after drying.
  • Final analysis and review of the workshop.

Daily Schedule
Day 1: Introduction, concept sketching, and creating cardboard models. Preparing porcelain-textile mixtures and making the first thin porcelain sheets. Working on small luminaries (photophore-style lamps).
Day 2: Preparing thicker porcelain-textile sheets for large pieces. Refining patterns and volumes using cardboard sheets.
Day 3: Drying luminaries. Cutting, assembling, and stitching large models.
Day 4: Finishing large pieces. Firing small pieces at 1280°C.
Day 5: Unloading the kiln. Final review and Master Class evaluation.

DATES & LOCATION
Monday, March 10 – Friday, March 14, 2025.
Public Exhibition: Saturday, March 15, 2025. Exhibition of works created by participants alongside Thalia Reventlow’s creations.
Open to the public – Free admission
10 AM – 12 PM & 2 PM – 6 PM
Le Bât d’Argent, 44 Rue Conti, Pézenas (34), France.

Target Audience
Ceramic artists, visual artists, post-graduate students, teachers, and professionals.

Participants: 7
Fee: €392 per person (accommodation and meals not included).
Information & Registration
Tel: 04 67 26 94 12
e.feliu@agglohm.net / n.jaafar@agglohm.net


About the teacher:
Ceramic artist and designer Thalia Reventlow was born in Denmark. She has mastered the ancestral gestures of pottery as well as the most sophisticated porcelain techniques, including industrial processes. For ten years, she collaborated with the greatest porcelain manufacturers in Limoges, a city recognized as a UNESCO Creative City for its centuries-old expertise in porcelain and the arts of fire.
Her Nordic design culture emphasizes functionality and minimal form. From her imagination emerge animal-like figures and emblematic objects, their silhouettes drawn as if in a single stroke, reminiscent of prehistoric cave paintings and Mycenaean art. These creations, deeply rooted in history, project us into an eternal and universal beauty.

 
Porcelain in Haute Couture Style. A Master Class with Thalia Reventlow.
Thalia Reventlow, Manchot.
Photo: © Emmanuel Perrin

© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Porcelain in Haute Couture Style. A Master Class with Thalia Reventlow.
Thalia Reventlow, 5 Hands.
Photo: © Emmanuel Perrin

© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.