Furniture designer and manufacture since 2006
Made in France
Art craftsman
History
Two life paths, one encounter, one ethic
BLUNT, a name that has evoked raw material since 2006, when Franck Rigal created his first furniture collection. The name BLUNT was chosen for its consonance and explicit meaning: strong, protruding, angular material.
In 2015, BLUNT was awarded the title of Artisan d’Art, their presence at the Salon Maison et Objet in the Design à vivre hall, and the confidence of customers for more than a decade, confirming their belief that craftsmanship has a place in decoration and design.
BLUNT designs and manufactures in their Biarritz workshops, a line of furniture that sublimates the strength and beauty of materials. : Steel, solid wood, lacquer…. Aesthetic, elegant, original and timeless collections where each piece is signed BLUNT with the year of manufacture.
BLUNT is a world in which creation protects the freedom of expression of materials and people.
Blunt is an ethical creation. Designing and manufacturing in France, refusing any production that would undermine ethics in favor of productivity and price. A daily concern for excellence in craftsmanship and choice of materials, because the beauty of a piece of furniture depends on its history.
Creation to stay ahead of copying, proximity to cultivate human relationships, love and knowledge of materials to sublimate them. The pride of the men in our workshop, who work with passion on each and every piece that will be installed in your interiors, each and every one of the unique or made-to-measure pieces that can be created for you.
Workshop
The human hand and gaze are virtuosic
In the workshop, men and women work, each with their own know-how, talent and daring to « tame the material », as Franck Rigal puts it.
Few sophisticated tools. Only an expert hand and a discerning eye are required to work the material to embellish its traces of history, to soften and shape it. You can feel it when you come into contact with softened angles, material joints or pieces of steel and wood.
Nothing superfluous, only the essential has meaning.
One of the reasons for the furniture’s clean, sober look is undoubtedly the absence of mechanical parts. This is why welding is so important at the heart of the workshop. Every piece of furniture we produce, from our steel or wood collections, passes through the hands of these fusion-welding artists for final assembly.
Nothing is left to chance, and every detail is important at every stage of production.
For collections incorporating solid wood, the hands of the cabinetmaker and joiner are involved in turn. In some cases, the borderline with the sculptor’s craft is close at hand. For the WOOD and WOODLAK collections in particular, it’s the man who bends to the movements and shapes of the piece of wood. With care, precision and passion, each and every one officiates to create the desired work.
Design
Design flirts with art
Every BLUNT creation tells a story to those who pay attention. Even a mass-produced piece of furniture is unique in the very essence of its material, thanks to its elementary expression and stripped-down language.
It was with this passion for materials, this ability to imagine the right balance, that the first collections were designed. It’s also a desire to return each object to its original function, through simple shapes in which the material takes over to give meaning and value.
« It’s not the designs that create the lines, but the materials that underlie them ». « The materials we use are timeless, they are real. By working with them as we do, they give the final object these same attributes:
timelessness and authenticity ».
Without pencil or sophisticated software, Franck Rigal creates; he listens to steel and wood and lets them seduce him.
Each piece of furniture is the result of a masterful gesture and a well-formulated design. The design office supports the idea, but does not induce it, because the essence of BLUNT creation takes place in the workshop, as close as possible to the essential: the material.
Over time, our design office has become a true partner for some of our customers, both private and professional, in the development of their architectural or furniture projects. This is why BLUNT’s creativity, expertise and freedom of expression are now recognized for their ability to satisfy and respond to precise custom requests and personalized projects.
BLUNT also creates special pieces for home, restaurant and hotel furnishings. The BLUNT trademark can be found in a range of services including wood and steel wall cladding, flooring and fireplaces.
Material
Blunt’s identity corresponds to a unique way of designing and making furniture, defending French manufacturing and celebrating materials and spontaneous creativity through our creations.
Steel:
Steel, a reference to the world of construction, is laden with a cold, impersonal connotation. Through his work, BLUNT gives steel another dimension and sublimates its history, like a wood grain. Pieces of steel or solid wood are selected one by one, as only a trained eye can recognize interesting or innocuous material. Steel tells a story through its mill scale, its traces of oxidation or contusion. The human hand brings out these marks and imperfections. In this way, each singularity nourishes the uniqueness of the manufactured model.
Wood:
Wood is a material where natural imperfections are a source of pleasure for those who work with it. BLUNT plays with these and excels in the art of transforming irregularity and particularity to create a unique piece. « Sapwood, for example, is an essential part of a piece of wood. Its size and color tell us a lot about the age and size of the tree ». The wood species mainly selected are Iroko and Sipo. Iroko is a blond, amber-colored wood with a fine, discreet weave, renowned for its high density. Sipo has the same technical characteristics, but its color is browner with a discreet grain. Because wood is a noble material, and should be treated as such, our woods come from eco-managed forests.
Whether in wood or steel, BLUNT offers a range of finishes that will give us a wider choice of possibilities.
