Meeting with Dimitry Hlinka and Nicolas Pinon - Thursday, April 20 at 7 p.m.

Like every third Thursday of the month, JAD invites you to join us for a moment of exchange and dialogue in the presence of designers and artisans.

For this April edition, we're delighted to welcome Dimitry Hlinka and Nicolas Pinon.

The guests

Nicolas Pinon is a lacquerer, and his entry into this rare profession is a real journey. A cabinetmaker with a diploma from the Ecole Boulle, he fell in love with Japanese lacquer during a conference. His passion for this traditional technique, known in Japan as urushi, led him to cross oceans and continents, from Paris to Barcelona to Tokyo. In fact, it was with the grand master lacquerer Nagatoshi Onishi that he perfected his apprenticeship and enriched it with ancestral techniques on numerous journeys.

This heritage can be found in the delicacy of its decorations, the depth of its colors, the lightness, finesse and strength of its objects, all at the service of contemporary creation and restoration.

Dimitry Hlinka shares Nicolas Pinon's training as a cabinetmaker at the École Boulle, but his path has led him elsewhere, towards design. A creator of objects blending traditional know-how and forward-looking approaches, he is also a keen traveler, criss-crossing France and the world to meet exceptional craftsmen and singular trades.

A multiple award-winner since the Prix Avenir des Métiers d'Arts awarded by INMA in 2013, he applies his creativity and talent to product development, space design and research in a wide range of fields.

His creations, nourished by cultural hybridization, a pronounced taste for technical excellence and a flawless level of finish, embody contemporary, multicultural, forward-looking craftsmanship.

The dialogue between crafts and design

The two young designers are deeply rooted in the skills of manual excellence, and their meeting around the project rewarded by the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation launched them into a research project as exciting as it is improbable, combining urushi lacquer, 3D printing, thermochromic inks and digital technologies.