MATHIEU TOURNAIRE

Mathieu Tournaire, young jewellery designer at Tournaire is passionate about travel, and has made it one of his most important sources of inspiration for designing and creating collections with character.

A different kind of continuity

Pour Mathieu Tournaire, c’est l’atelier de son père artisan-joaillier qui incarne les moments de bonheur de son enfance. Il avait comme loisirs le bricolage avec son père Philippe Tournaire et d’apprendre différentes techniques propres à la création joaillière. Avant de suivre les traces de son père, Mathieu Tournaire a souhaité s’émanciper et faire sa propre route.Curieux et ouvert d’esprit, il a adoré voyager et parcourir le monde à la découverte d’autres lieux. Il a toujours aimé s’adapter aux différentes cultures et apprendre d’autres langues. La vocation de créer ayant été la plus forte, Mathieu Tournaire a été rattrapé par la passion de la joaillerie, transmise par son père.

An artist's childhood

Philippe Tournaire 's children spent their entire childhood in the workshop. "I 'fell' into the workshop when I was little. My first vivid memories with my father are of us in the boutique". explains Mathieu Tournaire
There are times when Philippe Tournaire would let his son fumble with the precious stones in search of color harmonies or jewelry. "I loved having fun with the different materials my father made available to me", explains Mathieu Tournaire

However, "I never thought of making a career out of it, and you often want to experiment on your own, to find a different path from your parents".

Mathieu Tournaire passed his baccalauréat in Montbrison, his home town. He went on to do a master's degree in history, followed by a

degree in anthropology, with a view to becoming a teacher. This artist is passionate about Latin America, which has taken him to Brazil several times, "a country I fell in love with". "I then went to Portugal, where I taught French". On his return to France, this young jeweller worked in a secondary school with disabled pupils.
Until 2006, Mathieu was just helping out in the workshop alongside his work. He realized how much he enjoyed being in this environment, and so decided to make it his profession. "I felt at ease in this creative environment where you combine both manual work and thinking about new projects." For a year, this young talent went to work for Verney Dray, before joining the workshops at Tournaire.

Sources of inspiration

Travelling is an integral part of this young jeweller's life. He owes his taste for adventure to his father. Indeed, they used to travel "roots" with his brother and father. It was a huge opportunity," he says, "because I learned a lot. It was a different way of traveling from going to hotels where everything was clean, where you had to make do with nature". Philippe Tournaire was passionate about the historical monuments and heritage of the countries he visited, so he naturally passed on this admiration for architecture to his children. Today, Mathieu couldn't go to a country without understanding its culture and visiting its historical monuments. Thanks to these travels, his mother and father were able to pass on their taste for historic buildings and teach him a different vision of the world.
Moreover, his unquenchable thirst for novelty and discovery of new horizons is evident in both the materials and concepts used in his jewelry creations.

Creator from father to son

After his studies, Mathieu often came to make jewelry whenever he had a moment. One day, this future artist told his father Philippe Tournaire that he would like to make jewelry. For the builder of this brand, this was good news, but he explained to Mathieu Tournaire the difficulties he could encounter, always being compared or being the son of... It was important for Philippe Tournaire that Mathieu went elsewhere first, to legitimize himself and not come as the boss's son. He went to work for a year in Lyon, where he gained in technique. He then came back, but "I knew it could only work because he was born and bred at the workshop." Every Wednesday and weekend, Mathieu Tournaire came to help out in the workshop, and quickly became part of the team.

MATHIEU TOURNAIRE