Baptiste Lanne
Baptiste Lanne is a French artist based in Biarritz in southwestern France. He creates unique handcrafted wooden pieces and drawings influenced by a deeply personal, organic, and poetic approach. Having worked nearly ten years in acclaimed design studios such as Philippe Starck and Habitat, Lanne felt the need to distance himself from days spent in front of screens. He wished to rediscover the craft side of design and return to the freedom he enjoyed as a child, playing with tools, pieces of wood, and simple branches from the garden. Lanne moved from Paris to Biarritz to get closer to the ocean and to set up his own studio where he crafts one-of-a-kind pieces including lamps, sculptures, drawings, and paintings. Every piece is fabricated on an individual, one-off basis and therefore remains completely unique.
Craft
Lanne is a self-taught artist, teaching himself how to fabricate his pieces by hand, primarily with wood. From his childhood to later design studies, using tools and raw materials has always been part of his life. Travelling has also been a part of Lanne’s creative development. He spent time in Japan visiting local woodworkers’ workshops. This travel helped spark the decision to focus on developing his personal artistic work. When he started, each piece took about ten days to produce and while he has become more efficient and nimble, Lanne still cultivates a form of slowness in his creative process. For him, taking time should be the rule.
In cultivating his creative style, Lanne looks for ways to reveal handcrafted details. Throughout his work, the essence of slow, and methodical hand-carving is central to his designs. The bespoke texture Lanne creates with gouges requires hours of careful manipulation by hand. Even in a collection of lamps that have the same silhouette, the organic texture of each piece of wood remains unique, also recalling wood’s natural and varying forms.
When asked about his process, Lanne shares that he does not really have one. Instead, he tries to follow his feelings and instinct. Lanne often spends several consecutive days exclusively drawing. Other times, he will dedicate several hours choosing the right piece of wood to sculpt, sand, and wax. He is continually looking for new lines, new combinations, new perspectives, to let the pieces speak to him, and to tell others who he is.
Material
Lanne’s material choice is tied intrinsically to his family history. He grew up in Normandy and thirty years ago his grandparents’ house was surrounded by open fields. They decided to plant thousands of trees there that eventually grew up with Lanne. The trees quickly grew taller than him and today the house is backed by a beautiful forest. Seeing a forest being born was a foundational experience for the artist. Lanne has always viewed trees as living beings that communicate, suffer, and help each other. This aspect renders wood a superior material in his eyes, a poetry-filled material. Lanne views wood as a durable material that is nonetheless delicate and requires care. He finishes each piece by applying a layer of natural wax that will need to be renewed over time. Lanne considers this relationship between humans and the objects we live with as one of the ways we can foster a more sustainable and conscious world.
When starting a design, choosing the right piece of wood takes time and is driven by its shape, size, and surface. For example, Lanne shares that walnut is great for its ridged surfaces and its hardness makes super clean cuts. Oak, on the other hand, is ideal for polishing into smooth shapes and surfaces. Lanne often goes to the Gers area, in the southwest of France, to source the best wood. He works with a small, old family sawmill in the area.
Nature is, unsurprisingly, Lanne’s biggest source of inspiration. In addition to wood, he collects all sorts of natural treasures like strange stones, dried twigs and leaves, broken shells, and open seeds. Lanne sometimes imagines his creations like small altars for those natural treasures. He is continually driven by a quest to bring nature inside our living spaces. He hopes that his lamps, with the light reflecting on the hand-sculpted texture, remind collectors of the sunrise over the ocean.
