Martin Szekely (b. 1956) is renowned in the world of French design. Coming from a family of artists, he deliberately turned his back on art as a teenager, preferring instead to pursue creative practices “grounded within the bounds of utilitarianism, ergonomics, cost effectiveness, technique and aesthetics”. Between 1971 and 1976 he enrolled at two schools in Paris, spending his days at the Estienne School of Printing and Graphics learning engraving and typography, and his evenings at Boulle School of Furniture and Applied Arts where he learnt cabinetmaking. This was followed by an apprenticeship in a carpentry workshop specialising in furniture restoration.

Martin Szekely’s first brush with design took place from 1978 to 1980 when he worked alongside Hong Kong architect and designer Kwok Hoï Chan (1939–1990), whose ideographic chairs inspired by Chinese calligraphy had left their mark on design styles of the 1960s and 1970s. Martin Szekely readily points out the importance of this encounter. A certain calligraphic approach underlies his pieces and one can also speculate on the relative influences of other factors, such as classes with the graphic designer and typographer Pierre Faucheux (1928–1999) at Estienne School. At the very least, one of his earliest designs, the Chaise longue Pi (1982), clearly displays a careful attention to line and purity of form redolent of Chinese calligraphy. Development of these sculptural forms is paralleled in his research, published texts which confirm the importance he gives to the circulation of air around an object, to notions of solidity and void. This type of formal minimalism stems from a conviction that an object should not have to advertise itself.

When he made the decision to stop drawing in 1998,1 Martin Szekely moved on to the next stage in his minimalist progression – i.e., reducing personal subjectivity in aesthetic decisions to a minimum, in order to leave as much room as possible for the essential functions of the objects he was making. Restraint and erasure virtually constitute a trademark of his work, an aspect which, with similar logic, he rarely evokes. This is why the third-year art and design students at ENSA Limoges and Indiana Collet-Barquero are particularly grateful to him for agreeing to launch the written exchanges series, throughout 2015–2016, and provide a personal insight into his positioning at the crossroads of art and design, a stance of obvious interest in art schools like Limoges where design is taught as a specific part of the curriculum. Martin Szekely was subsequently invited to partner with the school’s experimental ceramics laboratory, La Céramique Comme Expérience, and local company Keraméo in a two-year ceramic research residency at ENSA Limoges, “Slow Matter”, between 2018 and 2020.