Case study · Craft & art engraving
Lebeau-Courally,
gold under the light.
Four years of photography for the house of Lebeau-Courally, in Liège, since 1865. Hand engraving, gold inlays, walnut and blued steel: a goldsmith’s craft, demanding of the image the same patience as the workshop’s.
- House
- Lebeau-Courally, Liège, since 1865
- Collaboration
- Four years of photography for the house
- Subjects
- Hand engraving, gold inlays, walnut, blued steel
- Approach
- Studio photography, light built for the material
- Uses
- House imagery, print and digital
The commission
At Lebeau-Courally, each piece concentrates hundreds of hours of hand engraving. An approximate photograph would ruin what the workshop spent months building: the relief of a scroll, the warmth of a gold inlay, the depth of a blued steel.
The commission: to build, year after year, the images of a house founded in 1865, worthy of its pieces and of those they are made for.
The method, on this precise case
No artifice: light built for the material, and the time to look at it.
The workshop
Four years alongside the house: knowing the pieces, the gestures and the materials, to photograph what truly matters in a work of engraving.
The material
Gold does not receive light like blued steel, walnut does not return it like metal: each surface demands its own lighting, precise, with no reflection crushing the relief of the line.
The image
Images equal to the engraved work: sharp down to the line, faithful to the colours of the metals, able to hold enlargement.
The material, up close
Gold, ivy and steel: hundreds of hours of hand engraving, which the image must render line for line. The black background is not a set, it is a silence around the piece.
The images
What the house gains
A coherent body of images, built over time, where each piece is shown with the exactness its workshop demands.
And the demonstration that an image of craft is not taken, it is built: light, material and patience.
Your craft deserves an exact light. Commission an image project