The character comes before the drawing: Patrick Jouin

Ask Patrick Jouin where a chair begins and he will not start with the frame. In Du trait à l'objet, the exhibition his studio staged at RBC in Paris to mark nine years of work with the Italian manufacturer Pedrali, the argument is set out plainly: before the design there is the personality of the object, the character you decide to give it — and once drawn, that silent character changes the mood of the room it goes on to inhabit. A graduate of ENSCI in Paris, at the head of his own practice since 1998, Jouin makes the case with sketches, mock-ups, prototypes and tests rather than manifestos, because a first sketch is only the opening line of a conversation with whoever will produce it.

Two of those conversations reach British specifiers through La Mercanti: the Ester seating family and the Social modular system, both published by Pedrali. Where a project is judged on the atmosphere it creates, knowing who drew the character of the room is not a detail.