The creation process

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The African influence is strongly present in Valérie's work. The fine metal granules are still present, of course for many reminiscent of antique jewelry, but mainly for Valérie African jewelry.

 

Valérie very rarely uses the technique of sculpting jewels in wax, she does not work from 3D software and goes very little through the drawing stage. She imagines and creates each piece of jewelry by directly manipulating the metal.

 

His work is manual and closely linked, physically, to the material.

Each piece takes shape little by little through the manipulation and progressive shaping of the metal. A basic idea around a gem always changes during the creation of the gem. The final jewel invariably differs from the original project.

 

What allows Valérie to find the right place for her creativity in working with metal is the slowness of the process, the need to anneal, then beat, then to anneal the metal again to shape it. This slow imposed rhythm gives him time to think about the harmony and the details of the future jewel which takes shape little by little.