White ceramics and fragrances named after places: at Astier de Villatte, making objects and bringing scent into everyday life sit alongside one another. Both depend on collaboration with craftspeople who work in different materials.
Brand facts
- Founded: 1996, Paris, France
- Founders: Benoît Astier de Villatte and Ivan Pericoli
- Official website: https://www.astierdevillatte.com/
The founders and the beginnings of the brand
From art school to everyday ceramics
The founders studied art in Paris and encountered mould-based working methods under sculptor Georges Jeanclos. After experimenting with furniture and pottery, ceramics offered a commercial opening. They established the brand in 1996 and opened a shop on Rue Saint-Honoré in 2000.
The contrast between dark clay and white glaze became a distinguishing feature. Benoît has explained that white was not a predetermined aesthetic: it emerged while they were experimenting with pottery for everyday use. The appearance developed through making, rather than from a finished look imposed at the outset.
Bringing their ideas into the workshop
Even with moulds, handwork leaves differences between pieces. The initials of the craftsperson responsible for shaping an object are also marked on it. Ivan describes pottery as a collaborative activity in which individual ego recedes. Benoît’s description of the brand’s imagined past likewise suggests something other than the straightforward reproduction of antique objects.
How the brand works
Making French fragrances into incense on Awaji Island
The introduction to their incense-making collaborator came at an exhibition in New York. The founders approached a manufacturer on Awaji Island, and Benoît visited the site. The challenge was to incorporate essential oils blended in France into Japanese incense production. Work on the manufacturer’s side made that collaboration possible.
Conceiving a fragrance and turning it into a combustible stick require different skills. As with ceramics, the incense takes shape where an idea meets manufacturing expertise.
Awaji names both a scent and a place of production
The official description of Awaji incense evokes driftwood, resins, jasmine and immortelle. It is made on Japan’s Awaji Island. The production account describes kneading the ingredients, leaving the dough for about two weeks to absorb the fragrance, then shaping and drying it.
Among fragrances named after places, Awaji has a particular connection: the name points both to a subject for the scent and to the place whose skills make the incense possible. It connects an impression of travel with an actual working relationship.
Ceramics continue into the objects used with incense
The brand also makes ceramic incense holders. Choosing incense involves not only the fragrance but the object that supports it and the way smoke and ash occupy a space. Seen through that everyday use, pottery and fragrance become related parts of the same domestic setting.
