ORIGIN: Paris, France

La Soufflerie

La Soufflerie was started in 2009 by Valentina and Sébastien Nobile — a wife-and-husband team based in Paris. Sébastien had been dabbling in glassblowing when he realized that 100% mouth-blown glass, made entirely without machinery, was a dying art. At the time, fewer than five professional glassblowers remained in the Paris region. So they did something about it. They loaded four hand-blown vases onto the back of a bike and rode around Paris selling them to flower shops. The vases sold out in a day.

more about La Soufflerie

What began as a mission to preserve a craft has grown into a family-run studio dedicated to keeping it alive. La Soufflerie operates as a non-profit, returning all proceeds to the glassblowers and the craft itself.

Each piece is made in small batches by skilled artisans using traditional techniques — 100% mouth-blown, no machinery. Their glass comes from unexpected places: wine bottles, perfume bottles, window panes, even car windows, collected from restaurants, hotels, and factories, then washed, broken, and melted by hand. Colour is mixed directly into the furnace during blowing, so the glass itself is pigmented rather than painted.

On the base of every piece, you can feel the pontil mark left by the glassblower's cane. That mark means it was made freehand. Air bubbles, shifts in thickness, slight irregularities — these are not defects. They are the record of how the object was made.

The result is a collection of everyday objects that feel considered and enduring. Designed to be used, collected, and lived with — a quiet counterpoint to mass production.