The consecrated feminine - Élhée

The consecrated feminine

An ode to femininity, the BibRond design is directly related to emblematic, curvaceous creations in the worlds of architecture, decoration and the art of living. An aesthete, the container claims to belong to an illustrious lineage: an opportunity to take a historical stroll through the fertile universe of inspired creations...

 

An eloquent ancestor, the breast bowl

Also known as the jatte téton, the centerpiece of a dinner service designed to adorn the dairy of the Château de Rambouillet built for Queen Marie-Antoinette, was the subject of much speculation. At the time, rumor had it that the porcelain cookie piece had been made from a cast of the sovereign's breast. Yet another argument against her frivolity. The legend, now confirmed as true, nevertheless contributes to the magic of this iconic piece, which recounts the powers of a naturally nourishing body.

bowl

Breast bowl, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée le Jeune, Louis-Simon Boizot, 1787

A few centuries later, in 1969, Gaetano Pesce seized on feminine curves for a denunciation of a different kind. The designer pays a heartfelt tribute to a body that is both welcoming and abused. While the Big Mamma armchair, with its opulent curves and warm forms, invites the user to abandon himself as a child would, snuggled up against his mother, the pouf-boulet on his foot irrevocably condemns the feminine condition and the sexism hindering the freedom of his contemporaries.

 

The opulent curves of Italian design

roundness

Big Mamma, 1969, Gaetano Pesce

lamp

Nesso lamp 1967, Giancarlo Mattioli

Also a product of Italian design in the 1960s, the Nesso lamp by Giancarlo Mattioli is less committed but just as iconic, featuring a voluptuous shade said to have been designed after a woman's navel. The star lamp of the plastic years was thus christened Nesso, meaning cord or tie in Italian, shedding light on the sacred vocation of the female body.

 

Dreamlike, fantastical curves

architecture

The Bubble Palace, Antti Lovag, 1975

chair

Rio lounge chair, Oscar Niemeyer, 1978.

In architecture, curves are deployed in XXL versions to create sensual habitats. The Palais Bulles, the dreamlike 1,200 m2 villa that could house the adventures of a southern Barbamama, was acquired by Pierre Cardin. The famous couturier once remarked that "it's a woman's body". The immense Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, nicknamed the "genius of the curve", and his organic architectures evoke the curvaceous shapes of the female bodies he admired as a child on the beaches of Copacabana. A "miniature" version of these sensual dreams, the Rio chaise longue designed in 1978 by the architect in collaboration with his daughter explores the elegant delicacy of fantasized bodies to fit harmoniously into the designer's singular homes.

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