LIMOGES — In a corner of the workshop, Fernand Pénichon sits in total silence, brushing a white paste, called barbotine, in a flower design onto a large blue vase. Invented in the 19th century, this technique allows the creation of delicate, sometimes very tiny, relief patterns. There is no room for error or slip-ups because there is no turning back. Hence absolute concentration. And a lot of patience.
“We must respect a drying time between each layer,” explains Pénichon, a master of porcelain decorations, who has been at Bernardaud for 47 years. Very humbly, he will not say he is one of the last to master this art in Limoges — a west-central French city where porcelain factories began to be established from the late 18th century. Limoges became France’s main center for private porcelain factories and remains so today.
After an initial firing, Pénichon will retrace the contours of the patterns using a boxwood stick. The piece will then be dipped in an enamel bath, before a final firing at 2,336 °F (1,280 °C). “We love bringing complex ancestral techniques up to date,” he says.
Too bad if these pieces take hundreds of hours of work with no certainty of their commercialization. “It’s our luxury, we’ve been operating like this for more than 160 years,” says Michel Bernardaud, 67, who is CEO of the fifth-generation family business.
The risk seems to be worth it. The manufacturer, one of the last porcelain makers in Limoges, has survived a wave of products from Asia which, since the 1990s, has brought most French players to their knees with low-end products at knockdown prices.
Never doing so well
“We denounce the environmental and social disaster of fast fashion, but fast decoration is just as devastating,” says Bernardaud, a long-time advocate of made-in-France know-how, notably within the Comité Colbert, which he chaired from 2012 to 2016.
The Limoges-based company has created 430 jobs in three years.
Not only has his company survived, it has never been doing so well. “We are the leading manufacturer of tableware porcelain in France, with a turnover reaching 80 million euros, 75% of which is exported,” says Bernardaud, usually not very keen on talking about results of his company, the products of which adorn the world’s most beautiful tables, high-class restaurants, luxury hotels, castles, etc.
As a result, the Limoges-based company has created 430 jobs in three years. “My greatest pride,” the CEO says.
But when he took over the company in 1994, it was under dramatic conditions not only was the porcelain sector collapsing, but that year, when Bernardaud was only 36 years old, his two parents died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. Devastated with grief, he was propelled overnight to the position of president of the family business.
Constant renewal
Fortunately, since graduating from HEC business school in 1979, he had spent 15 years at working with his father, who had entrusted him with the reins of international affairs. The young Bernardaud, always between two planes, with samples filling his luggage, had quickly raised sales outside France to more than 50% of turnover.
“Conquering foreign markets remained my priority,” says Bernardaud, in the magnificently restored premises of the former factory, in the heart of Limoges. “To this end, we had to strengthen our know-how, invest in our factory, renew our collections, while exploring new uses for porcelain.”
Three times a year, designers, sales representatives and technicians meet with the general management for a creative seminar. From market trends, to collaboration with a luxury brand or a museum and proposals from external designers, etc., all the ideas are discussed and weighed in.
We have to constantly renew ourselves, be where we are not expected to be.
“The difficulty for an old house like ours is not to lock ourselves into a style. We have to constantly renew ourselves, be where we are not expected to be,” says Frédéric Bernardaud, the CEO’s 65-years-old brother. As the artistic director, he is the first filter for projects.
When chef Guy Savoy asked for a coffee plate with a hole to put a truffle in, or Marseille chef Gérald Passedat requested a bouillabaisse set, it’s obviously a yes for Bernardaud. It’s also a yes, when American artist Jeff Koons, whose famous metallic “Balloon Dogs” Bernardaud makes, wants to expand this collection.
“In addition to reproductions of paintings by artists like Matisse, Miro, Calder or Chagall, we multiply collaborations with contemporary artists, such as Olivier Gagnère, Sarkis, the Campana brothers and Manolo Valdés,” says Frédéric Bernardaud, adding that “These visual artists push us to get out of our comfort zone.”
In addition to candles, lighting, jewelry, wine bottles (for the Californian winemaker Robert Mondavi, in particular), Bernardaud has begun to explore many other uses for porcelain, including in ballistics.
Porcelain armor
Contrary to popular belief, porcelain is a very robust material. Following a research program conducted with the Ecole nationale supérieure de céramique industrielle (Ensci, attached to the University of Limoges), Bernardaud is today the only French manufacturer of armoring ceramics.
Because it only slightly deteriorates over time, porcelain is also of interest to architects, like the Parisian agency Fresh, which dressed the facade of Dolce & Gabbana’s boutique on Avenue Montaigne in Paris with 85,000 white porcelain spikes, giving it a subtle sparkling appearance.
We want to attract a younger clientele.
Bernardaud also appeals to luxury cosmetics brands, keen to use less plastic. Guerlain asked the manufacturer to design a porcelain — and therefore refillable — recipient for one of its creams. The result is hand-made, enameled in black and enhanced with 24-carat gold. With the same approach, Dior’s Rouge Premier lipstick is inserted in a porcelain tube screen-printed with the fashion house’s emblematic Toile de Jouy motif.
The technical teams “are the best,” says Charles Bernardaud, 30. General manager and Michel’s son, he graduated from the engineering military school École Polytechnique.
In 1979, Bernardaud opened a new white porcelain plant about 12 miles from Limoges, in Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a WWII massacre. There, the most meticulous know-how — modeling, enameling, demolding, finishing — are synced with the latest technologies — ovens, photoengraving, 3D printing of prototypes. And soon AI will join the mix, to support quality control, especially. But the finishing touches are still 100% by hand.
Elite clientele
Back to the historic factory in downtown Limoges, watching Pénichon and his colleagues work, one can better understand the astronomical prices of some items, up to 296 euros for a flat plate or 1,155 euros for a six-cup tea set.
But the prices don’t stop French brand’s elite clientele, especially in the United States, its biggest export market. Michel Bernardaud spent part of April there, first in Miami: “We are going to open our first selling point there.” And then in New York, where he is looking for a location for a second store, in the lower part of the city this time.
“We want to attract a younger clientele, the children of the regulars at our Upper East Side showroom,” he says with a smile. Another challenge for the Limoges porcelain maker.
