Alchemy in Paris
Legends in Le Marais
This past week in Paris for Maison & Objet and Design Week, my best friend Joann hopped over from London to spend the weekend with me. One of our activities was joining her friend Mark—a pseudo-local with a flair for the esoteric—for his walking tour of Le Marais.
That’s where I learned more about Nicolas Flamel—yes, the same Nicolas Flamel who shows up in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (mega Potterhead over here… anyone else?). He was, in fact, a real person—a Parisian bookseller who became wrapped in legend as an alchemist. Centuries later, his name is still etched into doorways and facades across the 4th arrondissement, proof that Paris never really lets its myths go.
Alchemy as Philosophy
honestly, I couldn’t stop thinking about that word: alchemy.
As Duchamp once said:
“Alchemy is a kind of philosophy: a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding.”
Paris Design Week felt like a living expression of that idea—where designers act like modern alchemists, transmuting raw materials into something luminous.
Alchemy in Action
Three installations stood out to me:
- Aubergine textiles → One artist sliced and dehydrated eggplants until they became paper-thin, fragile, and translucent. Vegetables, suddenly, were no longer food but art.
- Clay + paper experiments → Another poured liquid clay into paper, let it pool and stain, then fired it in the kiln with zero idea of what would come out. The results were unpredictable—and all the better for it.
- Egg carton sculptures → A third transformed discarded cartons into multicolored sculpture, stacked and shaped until waste became wonder.
It reminded me of The Golden Tract, an old alchemical text:
“The matter lies before the eyes of all; everybody sees it, touches it, loves it, but knows it not.”
Paris Design Week made this literal. We thought we knew vegetables, paper, clay, even packaging—but in the right hands, they became something else entirely.
What Alchemy Means for Design
Centuries ago, Flamel and his peers were chasing lead into gold. Today’s designers are chasing transformation in different forms:
- Waste → Beauty
- Fragility → Strength
- The Overlooked → The Unforgettable
Maison & Objet was alive with this spirit—textiles reborn from discarded fibers, furniture shaped from cinderblocks and salvaged ceramics, and countless other reinventions waiting to be discovered.
Alchemy in design isn’t about illusion. It’s about intention. It’s about recognizing potential and then coaxing it into its fullest expression—ensuring that what could be, in some way, becomes what is.
Final Thoughts
Paris has always been a city of alchemy—part history, part myth, part reinvention. And maybe that’s the real work of design too.
Not sleight of hand. Not decoration.
Just the courage to look at a material, a place, even a moment, and ask:
what else can this become?
💌Elle
P.S. I’ll be coming up with a trends presentation for Maison & Objet and Paris Design Week soon ! Shoot me a comment if you’d be interested in seeing it ☺️
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