The workshop of raw jewelry,Tümülü, was born in June 2021 in the Pyrenean Piedmont and revisits ancestral manufacturing techniques to unveil contemporary raw forms.Trained in graphic arts at the Estienne School, Fred Duvergé primarily worked in the fields of illustration, graphic design, and art direction before creating Tümülü. The workshop’s creations is a new exploration of volume, material, and texture, akin to a reinvention of ancestral practices. Amid seemingly archaic techniques, without machines or standardized tools, there is an,openness to all kinds of experimentation in order to produce simple and unique forms and textures.

 

The work takes place both indoors and outdoors:any found object, be it plant or mineral, can be used as raw material or as a tool. For example, the cases are crafted from burnt pieces of wood or tree bark collected from the ground.

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"Interesting shapes have the same roots to me. Wobbly features, as strong and fragile as the beauty of the ruins, of the large struck down old trees wich expresses a natural grace in their strength, a delicacy in their gigantic cracks.

I'm into these paradoxes. Everything that is perfect, smooth, mastered to the extreme only shows a dream of perfection. Partial illusion wich often ends up being unmasked and forgotten. We will rediscover these with emotion much later, twisted and rusty. Decomposed, bearer of a unique story, on its way to its natural state. Behind a work, there is a more or less mastered and idealized technique. Behind a cliff or evena twig, there is the true mystery of creation."