Different continuity

I thank all my clients, the most modest to the wealthiest, who gave me their confidence ... and allowed to achieve this story.

Family sustainability

Mathieu joined us in 2007. It must be said that with his Roman brother, they spent their childhood in the workshop. Later after his studies, he very often came to make jewelry as soon as he had a moment, he took a lot of fun and one day, he asked me: "I would like to make jewelry, what thought -You? ». I was not opposed, he knew it, but I explained the difficulties he could encounter, always compared, always the son of ... but he accepted the challenge. When I talked about it to Fred, he told me very intelligently: "Why not, it's a good idea provided that he does not go right away in the box. He must go elsewhere first, to legitimize himself and not come as the boss's son. "He went to Lyon a year in a company where he learned a lot. He came back next and I knew it could only work because he was born, he grew up in the workshop. Working before in teaching, he already came to work alongside us every Wednesday and he quickly joined the team. He never took anyone high, quite the contrary, he knew he had to be even more exemplary than any other person if he wanted to be taken seriously. He has ideas, is more and more creative and put a lot of energy to make his projects a reality. He gives his person, moves a lot. He really does a very good job.

Mathieu Tournaire's hereditary passion

I "fell into the workshop" when I was little. My first striking memories with my father are those where we were at the shop, rue Tupinerie. I remember when I made my first jewelry or when I played with the color stones. There were also moments when my father let me get caught with the precious pebbles in search of color harmonies for jewelry.
But there are also the trips that marked me. With my father and my brother, we gave up a lot with a Volkswagen minibus in which we slept. It was a "roots" vacation, we stopped where we wanted and wash when we could. It was a huge chance because I learned a lot, it was another way of traveling than going to hotels where everything is clean and well tidy. There you had to manage with and in nature. In voyage, my father always forced us to visit churches and museums. Which did not necessarily interest us when we were small. And then after a while, it became natural to go see the monuments alone. Today, I would not imagine going to a foreign country without discovering its culture and heritage. Thanks to these trips, my mother and my father managed to convey their taste for historical buildings to me and to teach me a different vision of the world. They are also enthusiasts of history and science, they are very educational, they love to explain, show things and above all transmit knowledge.

I particularly remember one of those moments of discovery that marked me, it was during a "house and object" show in Paris. There was a metal sculpture whose surface was cracked, but we saw that it was the artist who had reproduced this effect. My father then explained to me: "You see, when you try to reproduce a break on metal, you never manage to do as if it were natural because you reproduce it in an artificial way". It’s the same when you make a jewel, sometimes you have to let it go by chance. If there is a beautiful break, it can give style, testify to the imprint of time. This natural defect, it must be left because it is unique and cannot be reproduced by the hand of man.
From any kid, I made jewelry to have fun in the workshop while my father worked. But I have never considered making it my job, moreover no one pushed me. And then we often want to have our own experiences, find a different path from that of his parents. After my baccalaureate, which I had in Montbrison, I had a master's degree in history and then an anthropology license at the university to become a professor. I took courses on Latin America that fascinated me and led me a little later to learn Portuguese, Capoeira and to leave several times in Brazil, a country I fell in love.

The university allowed me to acquire an opening of mind, to make travel and to read a lot too, which I did not necessarily do before. These years have given me the opportunity to live a year in Italy, Milan, to validate my master's degree. While I was preparing the national education competition, I started working and I went to teach French in Portugal. I then returned to France to work in a college with disabled students. With hindsight, it would have bored me not to have my own experiences, not to grop. They served me, I do not regret having tried something else, I didn't close any doors.
Until 2006, I just gave a helping hand to the workshop in parallel with my work, I liked to tinker, it was a simple hobby. But by dint of going there, I became aware of the pleasure I had to be in this environment and I decided to make it my job. I felt comfortable in this creative environment where we combine both manual work and reflection around new projects that are similar to challenges to be met. I then asked my father if I could work with him, his answer was: "You have to start by going to work elsewhere to legitimize you". So I went to work in a traditional channel and primer manufacturing workshop in Lyon, to train, discover other techniques and acquire more experience. I worked at the Verney Dray company workshop to learn the basics of the profession. I started in September 2007, I stayed a year before joining Tournaire. Like any change of profession, it required a lot of work, but this adventure turned out to be very enriching.

I had learned a lot at Verney Dray, and when I arrived in the Tournaire team, I started in the workshop. I was fortunate to be trained by colleagues who gave me their little secrets, after I developed other techniques myself, with the experience I had acquired. Little by little I came to the creation, over the meetings with customers, personalized orders and with word of mouth, I made myself known. From there, I started creating jewelry and I was helping to enrich the collections. And I resulted in the creation of my first collection, Lock and Love, in 2013. It was a special moment because it was the first complete collection in the history of Tournaire; Until now, we created models as and then constituted a collection.
The idea came to me little by little, and I really started to develop the project during the summer of 2012, then the collection was released in spring 2013. I immediately believed lock and love, I had everyone's support and I knew she had a strong symbolic meaning. Taking out this collection was quite intense, I tried to manage everything, from creation to manufacturing, including marketing and sales. I realized that it was a big workload but Lock and Love was an accomplishment and marked a turning point for me. This collection helped me to go to everyone's eyes to a more official creator status when I did not necessarily have this image. I gained credibility.

At the time of the release, of course, I was afraid that the collection would not March, but I think my biggest fear was to be compared to my father. I am a huge chance of being able to do the work I love, but being the "son of" is never simple. We are exposed to criticism, or what I do is too similar to my father's work, or my creations are too different from the Tournaire spirit. What satisfies me with Lock and Love is the difference from what my father does, while being connected by codes. There is the theme of architecture with the bridge, there are many symbolisms on which my father worked and which find themselves differently in my creations. I like to say that I place myself in "different continuity" of work of my father.
Today, I continue to imagine jewelry models, with among other my little White Stone, the lonely he was missing in the collection Alchimie. He takes up the codes of the Tournaire house: the square, the triangle and the round. And I obviously continue the personalized creations that customers ask us. We have been organizing gemology workshops for a few years in Montbrison, Lyon and Paris to introduce our customers to the vision of the stones of the Tournaire Maison. We make small groups to manipulate the stones by the people who attend our animations and that fascinates those who participate.

Different continuity