Meet Homo Faber 2024 artisan Valentine Huyghues Despointes

Recreating the world around her in leather

• Creates colourful, hyper-realistic leather sculptures inspired by nature, food & sea life
• The daughter of a leather upholsterer, she grew up around leather
• Works with international brands on scenography, hotel décor, handbags and more
• Uses marquetry and upholstery techniques to create her pieces

There is something joyful about the work of Parisian leatherworker Valentine Huyghues Despointes. A flick through her Instagram profile reveals tropical clown fish swimming through colourful coral reefs and the waving fronds of sea anemones; luscious fruit and beautiful cakes which look good enough to eat; and even a trio of boiled eggs stacked on top of one another in a seemingly impossible defiance of gravity – which is because they aren’t actually real. In fact, the eggs, the clown fish, the shiny aubergines and radiant radishes are all made of leather.

Valentine, 39, has had a passion for leather since childhood. Growing up in a Parisian suburb, she was inspired by the work of her father, an automotive leather upholsterer, to carry out her own experiments with leather. Initially training as a stylist at the French capital’s now-closed fashion school Studio Berçot, she went on to study for a professional certificate in leatherwork at Ateliers Grégoire (now part of fashion training school La Fabrique). In 2014 she opened her own workshop, where she creates unique, surreal pieces inspired by nature, vegetation and the animal world, with the help of collaborator Mélanie Durand since 2020.

Upcycling scraps of highest quality goat and bullock leather sourced from Paris tanneries, Valentine employs two main techniques to create her works: gainerie, at it’s known in French, which means covering wooden forms with carefully prepared pieces of leather in order to create her fruit, eggs, vegetables and other solid 3D forms; and marquetry, whereby a design is laser-cut from leather in different colours and the pieces aligned on a flat surface to form intricate patterns, a technique Valentine uses to make handbags, boxes and wall coverings. Both types of work are much in demand, with Valentine creating unique pieces for luxury brands including Balmain, Delvaux, Hermès, Dior and many more.  

What links all her objects is colour. Speaking to Leatherfashiondesign.fr, Valentine explains that she rarely uses black, except for tiny details. “Colourwork isn’t done enough in classic leatherwork,” she says. “Putting colours together is something that I love to do. There are colours that absolutely must go together.”

Valentine will present several characteristically colourful pieces at Homo Faber 2024, including a table covered in a kaleidoscopic array of tropical marine life. It will feature in Nature, an exhibition space dedicated to highlighting the importance of the natural world throughout our lives, one of ten spaces within this year’s overall theme, The Journey of Life. Discover more on homofaber.com