\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u2018errors\u2019 which the French ceramicist<\/a> celebrates take the form of misaligned seams, pools of excess glaze, and slumping surfaces which lean onto each another for balance. Boos keeps returning to this thin space between intention and behavior, noting that the material behaves in ways he can not fully plan, but knows well enough to follow.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Emmanuel Boos first discovered ceramics during an exchange in the U.S., at a time when, as he remembers it, the medium held a different status in France. \u2018I have some relation with the U.S., because that\u2019s where I discovered ceramics,\u2019 the ceramicist<\/a> tells designboom at Raisonn\u00e9\u2019s New York gallery<\/a>. \u2018At that time, it wasn\u2019t very popular in France. We\u2019re very cerebral, we don\u2019t do a lot of things with our hands.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n From there, his path moved through China and South Korea, then through apprenticeships in Paris and Burgundy. His later PhD at the Royal College of Art focused on glaze, a subject that still seems to sit at the center of everything he makes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n a material with a mind of its own<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Porcelain, for Boos, is never a blank surface waiting to be controlled. \u2018Porcelain is a very difficult and tricky material to work with,\u2019 he says. \u2018Some people say it lives, because it has its own mind and wants to do its own things. And it really does. It has a memory.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A small pressure applied while forming a piece can reappear after firing, even once the mark seems to have been corrected. Rather than treat those returns as errors to hide, he allows them to become part of the object\u2019s final presence. \u2018I can\u2019t dominate it. Those things always surface up again, and so I\u2019m trying to get the best out of it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This acceptance came through years of resistance. Emmanuel Boos speaks of his own education in modernism, where still the concept of an artist or designer was someone who could dominate nature. \u2018At my age, we were still educated with modernism,\u2019 he says. \u2018We still believed we could dominate nature. So it wasn\u2019t that easy to come up with that thought then.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In a way, this mindset can be read through his works on view at Raisonn\u00e9\u2019. His tables are made from porcelain bricks and modules, their gridded surfaces nearly architectural, but never fully regular. On one hand, the works suggest order. Up close, they reveal small shifts, sags, seams, and warps.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n functional ceramic works find beauty in awkwardness<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For Noir C\u2019est Noir, Boos developed new works in black and dark brown Tenmoku glazes, alongside celadons and kakis. The exhibition brings together more than seventy unique pieces, including coffee tables, side tables, stools, vases, and sculptural-functional forms.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Many are built from repeated elements: bricks, squares, parallelepipeds, hollow modules that gather into tables or stand as objects in their own right. The pieces remain free and reconfigurable, held in place by balance, weight, and in some cases wooden dowels.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018That\u2019s the trick,\u2019 he explains. \u2018To make them functional enough that you can set them as tables, and then have something in them that questions function and brings them toward something else.\u2019<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That slight disturbance of function runs through the show. A table can hold a glass, but it also holds uneven surfaces and inconvenient gaps. A vase can hold flowers, but it may also slump, fold, or lean into another vessel for support. Even still, Boos seems to enjoy the awkwardness. It\u2019s where use stops being automatic and starts becoming a relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"toward a friendly relationship with chaos \u00a0 At Raisonn\u00e9 in New York, Emmanuel Boos walks us through Noir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[23478,236976,30539,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-505465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ceramic-art-and-design","tag-crafting-the-future","tag-design-interviews","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"emmanuel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/emmanuel-boos-raisonne-noir-cest-noir-exhibition-ceramic-craft-designboom-01.jpg\")
Emmanuel Boos | image \u00a9 Zach Pontz<\/a><\/p>\n![\"emmanuel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/emmanuel-boos-raisonne-noir-cest-noir-exhibition-ceramic-craft-designboom-02.jpg\")
image \u00a9 Zach Pontz<\/p>\n![\"emmanuel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/emmanuel-boos-raisonne-noir-cest-noir-exhibition-ceramic-craft-designboom-03.jpg\")
image \u00a9 Zach Pontz<\/p>\n![\"emmanuel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/emmanuel-boos-raisonne-noir-cest-noir-exhibition-ceramic-craft-designboom-04.jpg\")
image \u00a9 Zach Pontz<\/p>\n![\"emmanuel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/emmanuel-boos-raisonne-noir-cest-noir-exhibition-ceramic-craft-designboom-05.jpg\")
image \u00a9 Zach Pontz<\/p>\n