Pair of Butterfly Sycamore Stools, Hand-Sculpted and Signed by Cedric Breisacher

French designer-sculptor Cedric Breisacher (b. 1992) draws his salient references from both Japanese design and nature in his fluid, organically-formed furniture work, which coheres around the sculptural curves of hand-carved wood.

Born in Trappes, a commune close to Versailles, Breisacher cultivated his design sensibility via a conglomerate of self-teaching and formal pedagogy; in 2015, he graduated, with special recognition, from the 5-year industrial design program at ISD Rubika’s Valenciennes campus. Directly after, he enjoyed a brief internship under German designer Valentin Loellmann, which primed his subsequent move into freelance design, in 2016.

Designing from a Lilles-based workshop, Breisacher creates small-series furniture and unique sculptural pieces that are both, as is the nature of their hand-craft, bespoke and entirely made-to-measure. Their forms orbit around the artisanal lightness of locally-sourced wood, which Breisacher carves from a unique variant of cleats to produce the breezy, organic postures that mark his oeuvre’s signature. Refined yet highly personal, this style is best illumed in his recent BTRFL (or Butterfly) stool, designed as part of his summer-in-Brittany-inspired Dune collection (2018), whose strikingly sculptural marriage of natural and industrial forms garnered Breisacher his first major award, the 2018 Atelier d’Art de France prize (for the Haut de France region).

Although on the neonatal end of his design career arc, Breisacher has already showcased at a number of international exhibitions, including at Paris Design Week’s avant-garde-skewing Now! Le off springboard for young design talent (2017), and, more recently, the Venice International Architecture Exhibition (2018).