Dumais Made is a Connecticut-based ceramics studio specializing in handmade lamps, objects, and accessories. Founded by Charlie and Kevin Dumais in 2017, the studio began as a hobby and has since grown to include a team of six. Their products, which include lamps, pendants, sconces, tables, mirrors and other accessories, are inspired by modernist sculpture and explore the rituals of living with light. Each piece’s design and production is overseen by Charlie from start to finish, ensuring that they remain true to their original concept of being tactile objects that reveal their character the longer you live with them. Learn more about Dumais Made in today’s Maker Monday.
Dumais Made finds inspiration in the natural surroundings of their studio in Litchfield as well as in human-made objects such as mid-century designs or antique Japanese lamps, sparking the beginning of their business.
Andrew Joseph: Describe your design style as if you were explaining it to someone who cannot see.
Charlie Dumais: Our pieces are sculptural, tactile, and three-dimensional. The stoneware surfaces are textured and rough. The addition of our glazes either enhances or obscures the raw clay texture. Some of our glazes are quite smooth while others become rough like pumice stone. Our shapes are simple. The surfaces are sometimes modified with geometric rolled patterns or with careful attachments or punctures. Our pieces have physical weight but are meant to be felt and held and lived with.
Dumais Made uses clay, a natural material, therefore each of their pieces is individual and unique. Their surfaces and seams are subtly different; their shapes quietly distinct.
AJ: What are three words to describe where you live?
CD: Bucolic, inspiring, peaceful. We live in Litchfield, Connecticut, though Kevin spends half his week in New York City. It is a complete contrast and complement to the city. There is a rich, supportive arts culture in our corner of Connecticut that is absolutely surprising.
AJ: What would you like to be remembered for?
CD: I would like to be remembered for creating good, thoughtful, original work, for being a kind person, an enthusiastic collaborator, and for being fun. It’s important in our life, and in our studio to work hard, be supportive, and to laugh.
Dumais Made’s pieces are finished with the finest glazes using a carefully considered palette inspired by the environment around us. Lamps are then wired with antique brass fittings and topped off with a shade, which easily transforms the piece.
AJ: What’s inspiring you in life (in the industry) right now?
CD: In life, travel. We just returned from Paris and London and found the trip refreshing and saturating. My head is swimming with ideas. My body is full of baguettes. In the industry, in interiors and design, playfulness. I hope the next year will bring more emphasis and interest in color, pattern, and scale. I think perhaps, a result of the pandemic is that design is becoming more maximalist, more optimistic, and whimsical.
AJ: A book that everyone should read?
CD: Mother Noise by Cindy House. I attended a reading by the author and then read and listened to her memoir. It is brilliant and heartbreaking and hopeful. I can’t recommend it enough.
Over the past six years, Dumais Made has grown and evolved. A team of six now produces lamps, pendants, sconces, tables, mirrors and other accessories. And, while styles have become more playful and techniques more refined—a reflection of this artistic collective—each piece (overseen by Charlie from start to finish) remains true to the first: a tactile object that reveals its character the longer you live with it.
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