Adrien des Rues: When Wood Becomes a Language

Meeting with an art craftsman who inscribes contemporary cabinetmaking at the border of design and architecture.

In a shared workshop in the heart of Lyon, wood takes the floor. At Adrien des Rues, it never settles for being a material to be shaped. Each piece is born from a slow and attentive observation of the matter: its grains, its knots, its resistances, its accidents.

Here, the drawing does not impose itself as a prior authority: it accompanies the gesture, transforms itself throughout the manual work, adapts to what the wood allows or refuses.

Cabinetmaker and creator of exceptional pieces, Adrien des Rues develops a practice situated at the border of contemporary design and art craftsmanship. A demanding practice where time becomes a design tool in its own right.

An instinctive relationship with matter

Wood imposed itself very early as an evidence in Adrien des Rues’s path. Even before technical learning, there is this attraction for a living matter, marked by growth, time and the unpredictable.

“I found this matter extremely poetic.”

An instinctive poetry, nourished by a direct relationship with nature, but quickly put to the test by the reality of the profession. Upon entering training, Adrien des Rues confronts a radically different vision from the one he had built for himself. Behind the apparent softness of curves and the sensuality of wood, cabinetmaking reveals a rigorous discipline, made of precision, structural constraints and irreversible technical choices.

This initial disillusionment proves to be foundational. It marks the starting point of a mature practice, where poetry no longer precedes technique but emerges from it. A balanced approach, where conception dialogues permanently with the gesture, and where sensitivity rests on a deep understanding of the material.

Adrien takes today as much pleasure in drawing as in making. He claims however a rare lucidity: certain skills cannot be improvised. Metal, ceramics or porcelain then become grounds for collaboration rather than limits, opening the way to a design thought as a collective act.

Creating in the city

Established in Lyon since 2019, Adrien des Rues has made the assumed choice of independence and work in urban environment. A positioning against the current of the traditional image of the isolated craftsman, but profoundly coherent with his vision of the profession: to remain connected to the city, to other creative practices and to the contemporary cultural world.

Refusing a posture of executor, he joins Manufacture S, a shared workshop dedicated to art crafts and contemporary creation. Thought as a place of production as much as of reflection, this space gathers craftsmen, designers and artists: jewelers, ceramists, porcelain makers, restorers of art works specialized in painting and paper.

Far from the model of the showroom or the gallery, Manufacture S functions as a living laboratory. A place where know-how circulates, where disciplines cross, where projects are built in dialogue. Carried by an association engaged in the revalorization of art crafts, the place actively participates in the reintegration of craftsmen in the urban and cultural fabric.

Naming to better embody

At Adrien des Rues, each piece bears a name. An attention given to language that naturally extends the creation process. To name is to inscribe the object in a narrative, to confer upon it an identity that surpasses its primary function. The furniture then ceases to be purely utilitarian to become a presence, almost a figure.

These names act as true reading keys. The furniture then resembles more a work than a product.

Emblematic pieces

• The Chessboard Ordalie — Elegant reinterpretation of a codified object, at the border of game and sculpture.

• Cosmos — Table realized in collaboration with ceramist Céline Charroy, where wood and ceramics dialogue in a subtle balance between structure and surface.

• Lamp-bookshelf Turbulence — Realized during his training, this complex piece associates a wooden structure with stone elements and integrates a concealed light source. A true manifesto project, it reveals very early the structural ambition and the technical requirement that characterize his work today.

The territory as creative resource

Adrien des Rues works exclusively with woods from the Rhône-Alpes region. A claimed choice, which largely surpasses the sole ecological dimension. It implies a deep knowledge of local sectors, sawmills, transformation methods, but also natural cycles specific to each species.

Each wood imposes its constraints, its reactions, its expressive possibilities. This proximity with the raw material creates a sensitive traceability: a direct link between the territory, the gesture and the finished object. The furniture then becomes the discreet witness of a geographical and cultural anchoring.

Transmitting to make the gesture evolve

Parallel to his activity as creator, Adrien des Rues dedicates one day per week to teaching adults in professional reconversion, aged 22 to 40 years. A voluntarily preserved time, thought as a space of transmission but also of permanent questioning of his own practice.

“Being with young people motivates me enormously. They have another way of thinking, and it’s very carrying.”

In this learning of the gesture, transmission becomes a living exchange: to show, to correct, to accompany, to go over again. Manual work creates a common language, a collective dynamic that nourishes as much the teacher as the learners.

Collaboration as exploration ground

Today, collaboration is at the heart of Adrien des Rues’s approach. After Cosmos, he develops a screen project integrating porcelain, pursuing his exploration of hybridizations between materials.

These collaborations do not belong to decorative juxtaposition. They rest on a true dialogue between know-how, giving birth to singular pieces where each material preserves its own voice while participating in a coherent composition.

Time as ultimate luxury

Against the flow of industrial logics, Adrien des Rues claims long time as a true creative luxury. Some projects take a few months, others require more than a year, even a year and a half. Time is never a simple deadline: it becomes a matter in its own right, a design tool.

To return to a piece after several weeks, to let a drawing rest, to accept to modify a structure already engaged: this temporality allows an aesthetic and technical maturation impossible in urgency. It also happens that certain pieces are produced in double, offering the possibility of subtle variations and a progressive perfecting of the gesture

Perspectives

The coming year announces itself as structuring. Between competitions and applications to annual collections, Adrien des Rues pursues a trajectory built with patience, without search for overproduction nor fashion effect. Institutional devices that allow to support the small series made in France and to inscribe his work in demanding networks.

In Lyon, Adrien des Rues thus draws a contemporary vision of cabinetmaking, where furniture becomes a manifesto-object, at the crossroads of design, art and craftsmanship.

To discover on: www.astepinthewood.com