This French woman is Colombian at heart. She talks, feels, and thinks with her hands: it is how she explores the world of crafts and satiates her endless curiosity surrounding textures. She came to Colombia in 1985 to learn Spanish because several people told her that Colombians spoke it beautifully. Yet, what was supposed to be a trip of just a few months eventually turned into a lifetime.

First, she went to Ráquira and marveled at Boyacá’s ancestral ceramists. Four years later, she discovered Barichara and immediately fell in love with it. Everything she knew bolstered her desire to live and create in Colombia: what she had learned in English school, the many crafts she already knew, the inspiration and wisdom she inherited from her florist grandmother, and her education in applied arts, music, and math.

At the beginning of the 1990s, she was able to put her designs to the test with a group of architects who were developing a vernacular architectural project in the area. They were looking for furniture and accessories with which to complement the buildings they made with tapia pisada —layers of pounded earth— guadua wood, stone, and adobe.

She was able to craft her emblematic lamps and “light forms”—wares which she is known for at the Expoartesanías fair— thanks to the clarity of her grandmother’s stained-glass windows, which illuminated her childhood, as well as her general interest in translucence. Lamps and furniture made in canvas and wicker —these “flexible, admirable, firm, and beautiful rods”, as she describes them— became her hallmark.

Every part of this process has evolved with her. Initially, her approaches were a little more intricate. When she achieved some recognition, she started exporting her wares. Her experience has taught her that she prefers simplicity. Her personal motto is as follows: “When I grow up, I want to be little.” She keeps Colombia in her mind and stays small-scale in her increasingly simple and minimalistic designs as well as her business model. She does this so she can personally attend to her customers.

The period of isolation that took place during the pandemic gave her time to experiment with the limited amount of materials she had available. Following the wisdom of Amazonian weavers, she made a new line of lamps to export using recycled plastic. She is honored to be known as part of Barichara’s heritage.