Carved Wood Sculpture | Thierry Martenon
Maple
16W 4D 14H
Thierry Martenon - The famous woodturner
Thierry Martenon was born in Le D'sert, a hamlet with around a hundred inhabitants, a few kilometres from Entremont-Le-Vieux. After doing a BEP certificate as a surveyor and a CAP certificate in cabinet-making, the sight of pieces by Jean-Francois Escoulen inspired him to learn wood-turning, six months with Philippe Bourgeat before returning to set up his workshop beside the road passing through the hamlet. "I love this material. I grew up with it and no two varieties of wood are the same. But when I was being trained, above all, I learned to sand it and polish it without any creative approach. I rediscovered wood by exploring its texture, by working with the grain, burning it and letting it come into contact with acid." In the workshop filled with wood shavings, carving chisels, the grinder and the saw are set next to the drill, brushes and the blowlamp. Only a few tools. "It's a good thing to work with almost nothing; you tinker and invent; I've achieved textures simply by rubbing a handful of gravel on the wood. Research is the only interesting thing, you waste quite a lot of time freeing yourself from technique."
Devoid of any function and often designed in groups, his pieces in walnut, maple, pear-wood and ash are the result of a purely aesthetic approach. Their 'contemporary primitive' style won admiration from interior designers at the latest Maison&Objet fair. Far from claiming to be a turner, he envisages mixing wood with steel or stone and admits that he is strongly drawn to paper and glass.
