Eagles
Sleeping beauty : Marquetery revisited
YMER&MALTA
2025
The Eagles Table takes up the codes of the ceremonial table, which disappeared with the advent of design, when appearance became secondary to function.
The ceremonial table, more decorative than useful, expressed the luxury and status of its owner.
YMER&MALTA, without denying the tradition of exceptional materials and craftsmanship, turns it into a precious object that can be used every day.
After defining a free form—like that of a bird—yet rigorously calculated to provide a convivial gathering for 12 people, I had to design a powerful marquetry to evoke the discreet, sober plumage with its strong presence.
After the long drawing phase to capture the wings came the crucial moment of selecting the veneers.
After many trials and around thirty varnished samples, I realized that I needed to use woods of similar tones but with varied textures.
In my research, I had come across a rare example of different veneers taken from the same trunk of bog oak.
Everything is harmonious, but the part submerged in mud is darker than the portion slightly exposed to light: straight-grain wood with its fine regular pattern, and crown-cut wood, difficult to work but spectacular—an infinity of combinations from veneers cut from the same trunk, forgotten for thousands of years at the bottom of a marsh.
Once cut, each of the 500 pieces is numbered and positioned so that the grain of the wood follows the movement of feathers.
Time is the secret behind the magic of YMER&MALTA’s creations.
Shaping the table edges in a Scottie profile is a remarkable prowess of routing for a table of such dimensions. On the edges, each piece is hand-fitted and applied with hot glue. Even the invisible parts are veneered so that every component of the table, when dismantled and viewed separately, appears visually perfect.
The tabletop is a masterpiece and deserves legs of equal stature.
For technical reasons, the legs must be made of solid wood, without the richness of marquetry. Yet they still needed to evoke the organic quality of a bird’s leg.
A rare and precious wood that conveys this sense of life exists : Ziricote, with its spectacular grain.
Sold by weight and difficult to source in large dimensions, it was nonetheless an obvious choice. As was the use of a delicate Japanese joint that we had experimented with at another scale for our series of trivets. A consistency across collections that is the signature of YMER&MALTA.
Today’s highly resistant finishing varnishes make the table suitable for daily use.
The Eagles Table, a ceremonial table, is destined for the aesthetes of the 21st century.
L: 260 x l:143 x H:75
Woods, marquetry
Limited edition of 12 pieces.
Eagles is from the collection :
SLEEPING BEAUTY: MARQUETERY REVISITED
Sleeping Beauty : Marquetery revisited Collection brings a breath of fresh air and creativity to one of great traditions of French craftsmanship: marquetry. Numerous types of precious wood are cut and assembled in an original way, depicting landscapes, animated shapes, abstract or figurative motifs. The result is a surprisingly kinetic, contemporary vision of marquetry.
Other pieces of the collection :
SLEEPING BEAUTY: MARQUETERY REVISITED
Black Snake
Coffee Table
Marquetry of dyed pear tree wood, white ebony, matt lacquered steel
Other collections
SKYLIGHT - Light installations
YMER&MALTA created the Skylight light installations based on the AsphericalSkylight piece created in collaboration with Benjamin Graindorge in 2011.
The Skylight light sculptures have a simple, minimalist appearance, but conceal a complex geometry. Once illuminated, a window onto nature opens up and draws our gaze until we are mesmerized, absorbed by their light.
“From sunrise to sunset, through the depths of night, from the colors of glaciers to those of the desert, the palette of blue-greens of the water contrasts with that of the forest.” Valérie Maltaverne
Oak and LED
Set of 5
L.250 × W.14 × H.36 cm
Limited edition of 25 pieces per color palette
EIDOS XXI
Eidos XXI was designed by the Valérie Maltaverne and Benjamin Graindorge duo, in collaboration with «l’atelier de recherche et de creation» of the Mobilier national, like an inside landscape, a moving forest in the closed space of the office.
Each piece responds to the other through a skilful play of scales, proportions, techniques, materials or colors. To remain faithful to the DNA of the YMER&MALTA Studio, the creators added, as they are used to, all the wealth of ancestral know-how to the most cutting-edge technological innovation.
Praise of serenity, the works in this office ensemble are powerful and floating, as if suspended in space. They come together in a play of truth, allowing the imagination to wander gently for a richer creative process.
Generous in its dimensions, the elements do not embarrass themselves with unnecessary decoration—no drawers, just shelves—to avoid hiding and simply lay down the essentials.
Cloe Pitiot, Curator, Musée des Arts Decoratifs de Paris
AUBUSSON TAPESTRY : THE GREAT LADY
Given the quality and cohesion of the previous collections from Valérie Maltaverne, YMER&MALTA, the Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie commissioned a series of art furniture pieces where the historical techniques of this savoir-faire, inscribed on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, were given an innovative momentum by exceptional design creations.
“YMER&MALTA not only mobilized and skillfully played with the intangible heritage of Aubusson tapestry: it enriched it ».
Bruno Ythier, Chief Curator, Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie
AKARI UNFOLDED for The Noguchi Museum
“The exhibition Akari Unfolded – a series of 26 light sculptures – came out of a 2016 visit to The Noguchi Museum during which Maltaverne decided to apply her model to Akari. The challenge was to see whether she might, treating Akari as the tradition, extend its fundamental alchemies—what Noguchi called the intrinsic qualities of craft whose products cannot be successfully falsified (as the many Akari knockoffs demonstrate)—into the future.”
Dakin Hart, Senior Curator, The Noguchi Museum
TABOURET 100
Tabouret 100 Stool
YMER&MALTA / Valérie Maltaverne
2023
YMER&MALTA’s hundredth creation, is composed of three interlaced rings made through linen-fiber composite 3D printing. This material, both deeply French and innovative, combines tradition with eco-responsible technology. The lineb-fiber PLA, bio-sourced and biodegradable, is also free of endocrine disruptors.
The surface of the Tabouret 100 is finished with an exceptional paint used in the worlds of yachting and aviation. It spreads across the surface like a second skin, with a supple, organic appearance that lends the object an almost living presence. This finish, both resistant and refined, makes the piece perfectly suited for outdoor use.
The Tabouret 100 can be produced in one, two, or three colors, or in the purity of the raw material. Each shade is chosen from the floral world, bringing the object a poetic and delicate dimension.
Collectors may also personalize the piece by selecting their own colors.
To celebrate this hundredth piece, Valérie Maltaverne designed, for the collections of the Mobilier National, a commemorative edition in Blue, White, and Red.
Acquired by the Mobilier National
Linen-fiber PLA
L.60 x W.60 x H.45 cm
COMBINAISON
Combinaison is a collection that often works through juxtaposition, at times through confrontation, inversion and even hybridisation, but never through opposition. A series of combinations that speak of moments where methods (gilding and corten steel), materials (paper and metal) and manufacturing processes (Horology, granit machining and 3D printing) collide.
À FLEUR DE PEAU : LEATHER
À Fleur de Peau pays homage to a traditional and luxurious material. This collection freely explores the possibilities of leather, playing with feelings and contrasts, textures, colours, shapes, in both supple and stiff leathers.
Powerful and sensual leather sculptures fill the space, making it more open and freer.
MORNING MIST
Morning Mist, a collection developed with Benjamin Graindorge, essentially proposes new shapes and reflections on the theme of nature. Through this ode to nature, Morning Mist proposes an alteration of reality, or perhaps attempts to reveal the essence of the real.
MARBRE POIDS PLUME
Marbre Poids Plume expresses the inconceivable, creating light objects made from marble.
Marble is ultra-resistant and, as a result, was refined to the extreme. Airy, sensual, light, delicate, it loses none of its density. Marbre Poids Plume proposes stark lines that surprise and move us.
A new poetic reality emanates from the pieces.
ILLUSIONS
Illusions features four pieces: two coffee tables, a cabinet, and a mirror, whose subtlety escapes at first glance.
Illusions acts like a sensorial and cognitive stimulus in the way it plays with optics, materials and perspectives that propose a new reality to the spectator.
À L’ORIGINE
These pieces designed exclusively with Cédric Ragot tell the story of the beginning of YMER& MALTA.
This collection was born from a vision where creative virtuosity dialogues with industrial design reality. À l’origine has a dreamlike, sensitive dimension that transcends the function of the object. Its purity and originality make it a strong, memorable collection bordering on contemporary art.
