Your cart is empty
Lacking inspiration?
Come discover the iconic lines of Le Tanneur.
You’ll only receive good news: exclusive gifts, new pieces before anyone else, invitations to our events. Sounds good?
Your search did not return any results
Trends
Best sellers
Le Tanneur x Alix Bortoli
Artist and filmmaker Alix Bortoli crafts stories and films by hand. From wood to ceramics, from paper to leather, she explores materials frame by frame, following a long and intricate creative process that reveals its magic only once the “play” button is pressed.
For our Christmas capsule, she imagined three videos made from leather offcuts from our workshops: a miniature factory inhabited by tiny characters, a tribute to leather, craftsmanship, and the poetry of movement. Her colorful, dreamlike world also extends to our window displays from November 5 to December 26, where this Parisian artist, trained in London, will take up temporary residence to celebrate creativity and the Christmas spirit.
Meeting with Alix Bortoli
I love the artisanal, sculptural aspect, the act of building things and using a different medium for each project. I’ve already worked with wood, textiles, paper, and ceramics. Right now, I’m working on a project involving wax. For Le Tanneur, it was leather. I like it when things have been made by hand before they appear on a screen.
It’s a complex technique that could easily be done quickly on a computer, but I find that working by hand always gives a more charming result. Working this way also allows more time to imagine new ideas. And I love when there are small imperfections, ones that might not be noticeable in the final result but that bring a human touch.
What was really great was having access to lots of leather offcuts. Thanks to that, I was able to create little characters illustrating the idea of “the factory,” which was the starting point for this Christmas spirit. You can see tiny elves made from Le Tanneur leather. I also wanted to highlight the Maison’s history by incorporating archival images into the videos. The idea was to capture the very essence of the Maison, including the notions of heritage and timelessness.
I start by doing a lot of research to immerse myself in the Maison’s universe. At that point, I knew I wanted to create something joyful for Christmas, playful, with color-blocked leather. I made storyboards, moodboards, and quite a few gouache sketches. Then I built a multi-plane setup, which is like a shelf of glass panels that allows for multiple backgrounds to create depth in the video. After that, I received the metal pieces, the bags, and all the leather offcuts. From there, I cut and crafted the little figures. The backgrounds were painted on Canson paper.
I really enjoyed making the leather hammer and the little windmill. I also loved creating the tiny characters. They are very simple, as I wanted to make something playful with an intergenerational feel. The leather objects are something I’d like to continue exploring, it was truly a joy to work on them.
