Joie de Vivre

To mark its 25th anniversary, French house Casamance has partnered with artist Geoffroy Pithon for a painterly collection charged with energy

Above Video: Courtesy of Casamance.

By Maile Pingel

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An uncompromisingly optimistic spirit permeates the new Geoffroy Pithon x Casamance collection. The esteemed French wallpaper and fabric house partnered with Pithon, a multidisciplinary, Nantes, France–based artist known for his gestural and poetic works, to celebrate not only it’s 25th anniversary but also its ethos—summed up by Casamance itself as “the pleasure of being unique.”

(Clockwise from top left) The artist and graphic designer Geoffroy Pithon; Pithon’s exuberant poster for his current exhibition, Carmina Paginata; and Coloramadre (FPCF, 2024), documenting the artist’s most recent body of work.

Pithon drew inspiration for the collection from the outdoors, and his designs are a dreamlike interpretation of exuberant plant life in abstract form.

Pithon, who graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs in 2012 and is represented by MAAT Gallery in Paris, drew inspiration for the collection from the outdoors, and his designs are a dreamlike interpretation of exuberant plant life in abstract form. He describes the patterns as “a suspended and endless setting” where “unfinished silhouettes and half-toned colors dance.”

Researching ideas for the collaboration, Pithon explored the work of self-taught American painter Joseph Yoakum, the minimalist landscapes of Lebanese-American artist and writer Etel Adnan, and the watercolor palette of Chicago artist Henry Darger. His goal? “To bring a free, festive, and sensory nature back into our interiors,” he says.

Imperial Valley in Imperial County near Karboul Mounds California (1966), Joseph Yoakum, pencil and ballpoint pen on paper. Untitled (1995-2000), Etel Adnan, oil on canvas.

The resulting collection is somehow as subtle as it is extravagant. “It’s colorful and large-scale, yet so simple and approachable,” says Dean MacCracken, of Shears & Window. The new collaboration, consisting of the Jardin Dansé wallpaper and the Vallées Suspendues and Douceur Ardente fabrics, is already a hit at the showroom.

Jardin Dansé is a panoramic wallpaper produced in Belgium on a crinkled, nonwoven base. It coordinates with the Vallées Suspendues and Douceur Ardente fabrics, and all are available in two colorways: one a mix of pinks and greens, the other of blues and ambers. Each colorway was created to reflect the varying hues of the landscape, from the greens of exotic Persian gardens to “pink rivers and mountains at sunset,” says Pithon.

Vallées Suspendues is a pattern of soft, organic shapes and impressionistic plant forms, a “valley” suspended between imagination and reality. “I liked the idea that the design could represent the cartography of a landscape spontaneously sketched out and imagined, but without any law of perspective or depth of planes,” Pithon explains. It’s digitally printed on linen voile to play up transparency and light.

Douceur Ardente, which translates as “fiery sweetness,” is similar to Vallées Suspendues and also produced in Spain, but created on a more textural 100 percent linen. Pithon’s patterns are intended to lure viewers into the imagined scene and become “intoxicated by the fragrance of colors,” he says.

Casamance is available through Shears & Window.

San Francisco Roots

Etel Adnan was an iconic Lebanese-American poet and visual artist who lived in Paris and Marin. Amongst her lyrical body of work on Northern California is Journey to Mount Tamalpais, which features this paean to the mountain:

“Tamalpais this morning has many shadows like an African beast touched by dew. At its left side, at its base, light unfolds like a peacock’s tail. There is translucence in the great expanses of grey and there is the possibility for an angel to come across.”

Untitled (Mountain) (c.1980s), Etel Adnan, oil on canvas

Joie de Vivre

By Maile Pingel

Pithon drew inspiration for the collection from the outdoors, and his designs are a dreamlike interpretation of exuberant plant life in abstract form.

San Francisco Roots

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