During times of such excellence in the realm of fashion and luxury, the Prix de l’Intelligence de la Main (Prize of Intelligence of the Hand), appointed by Liliana Bettencourt from the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, holds a significant amount of public prestige, annually recognizing since 1999, the “effort, talent,” and the “marvelous and rare combination of artistic inspiration and artisanal ability.”

This year, as the prize-winning decision draws near, The Daily Couture presents a recap of  2012.

The Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of Hand 2011

“My work is a reverence to slowness…. Nothing goes quickly for us, everything takes a lot of time… In slowness, there are many things to discover… one does not consume the outside world, one indulges in it… One slides within, one approaches the material… One doesn’t try to forcibly control it… one realizes that the material is very near to ourselves, one sees even that it is practically us…”*

Who can speak better of an artist’s work that the artist themselves?

That being said, don’t miss out on an opportunity to see the material in another light. Check out the great videos of the two laureates, whose words are extracted below, cited by cutler Jean-Michel Buatois, The artistic cutler was recognized by Exceptional Talents in 2011 for a dagger “Komon” made of organic damask steel.

The prize of Dialogues 2011 was awarded to ceramists Séverine Difist, Jean Dufour, Zelie Rouby, Raely Larson, Quentin Marais, Dominique Pouchain, and designer Guillaume Bardet for the, “usage of days,” a project composed of 365 ceramic objects. A sole object was created each day of the year, and then combined with the others to comprise the final work.

RECOGNISING THE CREATIVE DUO: THE WORK SIGNED BY THE ARTISAN AND THE DESIGNER

Aware of the need to continue artisanal creation in modern day France, a new recognition, Dialogue, was created in 2010, initiated by the Liliane  Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of Hand. Founded on the collaboration between artisan and designer, the prize responds to a need to encourage the “rich growth between the hand of the artisan and the imagination of the other creator” and the mediation between the two. Even is the artisan of art is used to responding to an order to work with the designer, he/she isn’t at all familiar with the right to co-sign the commissioned work.

The prize Dialogues is thus rooted in this new type of collaboration taken between the artisan and the designer, working together with a shared recognition of each artists’s contribution to the creative process. The work created by two, or by many in the case of the Dialogues prize, which will be awarded to all of its creators, designers, artists, architects, decorators etc. who played a role in the creative realm of it’s production.

Translation by Parker Chambers

Notes :

Videos of the Prix de l’Intelligence de la Main laureates