ORBISCERAMICISTS & GLASSMAKERS IN PARIS 9 shops in the atlas.Illustration
Ceramicists & Glassmakers in Paris
9 stores · curated ORBIS register
Alix D. Reynis hand-models porcelain in its rue Jacob workshop before production by a family manufacture in Limoges, making tableware and lighting. Astier de Villatte works with black terracotta and white glaze, continuing the Paris ceramics house founded by two artists in 1996. Crystal appears alongside ceramics through Baccarat, whose named products include Harcourt glasses and chandeliers made within its Lorraine tradition.
Founded in 2011 by Alix Depondt-Reynis, a former lawyer who began hand-shaping porcelain at age 35; her tableware and lighting are still hand-modeled in her rue Jacob workshop, then produced by a family manufacture in Limoges.
Best for Porcelain, lighting, and jewelry with a soft romantic French feel
Alix D. Reynis did not train as a designer. She studied law, worked for several years in a notary's office, then spent a year as a construction site manager before changing direction entirely. At 35, after the birth of her fourth child, she began working with clay in her home basement, first with earthenware and stoneware before discovering porcelain, drawn to what she describes as its lightness, fineness and quiet density. She launched her eponymous brand in 2011 with a first tableware collection, followed by scented candles, lighting, and more recently jewelry. Her working method has stayed consistent since: she hand-shapes and models each piece herself in her workshop on the rue Jacob in Paris, and those hand-built models and molds are then sent to a family-run porcelain manufacture in Limoges for production, rather than the pieces being produced from the outset in Limoges. The visual signature that runs through the collections, matte white glazes, clean lines, softened classical forms reduced to essentials, comes directly from that hand-modeling process, and from her stated preference for restraint over ornament in reworking traditional porcelain shapes.
Paris ceramics house founded in 1996 by Ivan Pericoli and Benoit Astier de Villatte, who met at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Black terracotta with white glaze, hand-thrown in France. Flagship opened 2000 at 173 Rue Saint-Honore, near the Louvre.
Best for Black-clay white-glaze handmade Paris ceramics with 18th-century character
Astier de Villatte was founded in Paris in 1996 by Benoit Astier de Villatte, his sister Mathilde Carron-Astier de Villatte, and Ivan Pericoli, who met while studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The trio began by designing furniture and turned to ceramics as an accessory to it before ceramics became the core of the business. Their signature pieces are made from black terracotta clay, dipped in white glaze and fired using centuries-old techniques that leave each piece slightly irregular - chips, drips and asymmetries are treated as part of the design rather than flaws. Production is largely handled by French and Tibetan artisans working in France-based workshops. The company opened its first boutique in 2000 at 173 Rue Saint-Honore in the 1st arrondissement, in a space that once belonged to the goldsmith Martin-Guillaume Biennais. The shop remains close to the Louvre and sells the full range: dinnerware, vases, candles, perfume, glassware, furniture and stationery.
The crystal of kings since 1764 — Harcourt glasses, red-box chandeliers and Lorraine savoir-faire. First crystal oven went into operation in 1816; Baccarat received its first royal commission from Louis XVIII in 1823.
Best for Harcourt crystal glasses and red-box chandeliers, crafted since 1764
Baccarat began in 1764, when Louis XV authorized a glassworks in the Lorraine village whose name it would carry to every palace on earth. Crystal came in 1816, and with it the commissions that built the legend: Charles X's service in 1823 opened the royal ledger, and the Harcourt glass of 1841 — six flat-cut facets on a hexagonal foot — became the most durable design in tableware history, chosen by popes, presidents and the Élysée without interruption.
The red boxes carry the wider empire: chandeliers that lit the Dolmabahçe Palace and tsarist Russia (the house once ran a furnace shift purely for the Romanovs), stemware services deep enough to name eras, and the Zénith chandelier in red crystal as the modern flag. Two hundred sixty years of Lorraine savoir-faire include a Meilleurs Ouvriers de France density no rival matches.
The Paris maison at Place des États-Unis — now flagship, museum and restaurant — stages it all in mirrored theater. Baccarat remains the word French uses for crystal when it means the best.
A Paris ceramics studio founded in 2015 by self-taught ceramicist Sara Théron, working from a workshop-boutique at 69 rue de Meaux. Hand-built animal figures and charms are finished with pigmented clay engobes and fired twice above 1,000°C.
Best for Small-batch ceramic animal figures and charms
Dodo Toucan began in 2015 with Sara Théron, a self-taught ceramicist who started out taking evening pottery classes for pleasure before deciding, almost on a whim, to sell her first pieces at a creators' market. That informal beginning grew, over roughly a decade, into a structured Paris ceramics business with its own workshop-boutique at 69 rue de Meaux in the 19th arrondissement, a small team of ceramicists, an e-shop, and close to 150 stockists carrying the brand elsewhere. The studio's identifiable style favors naive, narrative-driven forms, toucans and other animals, along with small charms and 'grigris' meant to carry personal meaning, built up by hand rather than cast from molds. Color is the technical signature: pieces are coated in engobes, a slip made from dry clay blended with pigment, which the bisque-fired ceramic absorbs; color only becomes fully vivid after a second firing above 1,000 degrees Celsius. Beyond animal figures and charms, the studio makes homeware, vases, bowls, decorative globes and fans, along with limited editions and one-off pieces. Théron and her team also run ceramics workshops on-site, from single introductory sessions to multi-week courses, extending the business from retail into hands-on teaching.
French faience manufactory founded 1821 in Gien, Loiret, by Thomas Hall on the banks of the Loire; known for hand-painted earthenware, armorial tableware, and tilework in several Paris Metro stations.
Best for Hand-painted faience earthenware tableware from the Loiret manufactory, since 1821.
The Faiencerie de Gien was founded in 1821 by Thomas Hall, who established the works in the town of Gien, in the Loiret department along the Loire river. Through the 19th century the manufactory built its reputation making armorial tableware commissioned by aristocratic families, and its tiles were later used in several Paris Metro stations. Today the works produce between 700,000 and 900,000 hand-finished pieces a year, supplying both its own boutiques and third-party retailers in Paris, Bordeaux, and Brussels as well as the United States. The company still manufactures in Gien itself.
Finnish glass modernism — Aalto vases and Teema tableware since 1881. Stocked at Galeries Lafayette in Paris.
Best for Finnish glass modernism, Aalto vases and Teema tableware since 1881
Iittala takes its name from the Finnish glassworks village where the company was founded in 1881, and its design language has since become a byword for Nordic modernism in glass and tableware. The house built its identity through collaborations with some of Finland's most significant designers: Alvar and Aino Aalto's sculptural, freeform 1936 vase -- its silhouette inspired by the lakes of the Finnish landscape -- remains in continuous production and is held in major design museum collections. Kaj Franck's Teema tableware series, originally launched as Kilta in 1953, established the now-influential idea of mix-and-match, stackable dinnerware built around simple geometric forms rather than a single matched pattern. Later, glass artist Oiva Toikka introduced the Birds by Toikka series, individually mouth-blown decorative glass birds that have become collectors' objects in their own right. Iittala's flagship retail presence in Finland is its Helsinki store on the Pohjoisesplanadi, renewed and reopened in August 2016 as a 217-square-metre showcase of the full product range, from everyday glassware to art-glass pieces, staffed by specialists trained in the brand's materials and history.
Paris ceramics boutique founded in 1974, owned since 2006 by Eric Goujou, showcasing handmade regional French pottery from Alsace, Provence, Normandy, Burgundy and the Camargue. Located at 35 Rue Daubenton, 5th arrondissement.
Best for French regional pottery and tableware
La Tuile a Loup was established in Paris in 1974 with a mission to preserve traditional, regional French ceramic craftsmanship. The original owners retired in 2006 and sold the shop to Eric Goujou, a longtime customer whose interest in handmade objects led him to take over the business. The boutique curates pottery, bowls, plates and decorative pieces sourced from craftspeople across multiple French regions, including Alsace, the Camargue, Normandy, Burgundy and Provence. It operates from 35 Rue Daubenton in the Latin Quarter, in Paris's 5th arrondissement, with multiple current sources describing visits as by appointment.
Manufacture de Digoin is a Burgundy stoneware maker for pitchers, bowls, jars, kitchen pieces, and French ceramic objects. At Paris, the range centers on burgundy stoneware pitchers, bowls, and jars for the kitchen.
Best for Burgundy stoneware pitchers, bowls, and jars for the kitchen.
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