JMW Studio

Located right in the heart of Paris, JMW Studio creates contemporary and exceptional works made of glass and brass, intended for professionals and lovers of fine handmade objects and luxury decoration, both in France and around the world. Armed with a team driven by passion, our studio also offers a turnkey service that enables us to take on major projects, not only designing new works but also producing, transporting and installing them.

Creator & Creations

Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert (born in 1980 in Paris, where he lives and works) is a French-American craftsman who has spent over twenty years perfecting freehand glass-blowing techniques that he learned during a cosmopolitan apprenticeship between the United States and Europe from 1998 to 2007. That year, he settled in Paris, where he divided his time between work in studios and participation in residencies, workshops and conferences. In 2015, within a historic fine artisans’ district in Paris, he opened his first studio where he produces all of his creations. From May 2019, a second space will be open on the same street to show them.

Mixing passion, creativity, know-how and collaboration within a team in which transmission plays a decisive role, Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert’s creations are all freehand-blown, without a mold. Elegant, sensual, often colorful and always luminous, they combine tradition, modernity and anticipation, and remain inhabited by the movement that formed them. In all their radiance, these unique works reflect multiple facets of glass and brass and their creative potential, drawing from creative freedom, the time to experiment, and a forward-looking inventiveness developed in a spirit of independence and boldness.

Spearheading handicrafts that are not disconnected from one’s creative energy, armed with its know-how and supported by an expert team, JMW Studio is developing an innovative concept alongside the sale of his emblematic creations. Needing to fulfill orders for exceptional, novel, world-class creations in France and internationally, it offers an original “turnkey” service, taking care of every aspect of the project, including the design, production, transportation and installation of the works.

The creation of these commissions testifies to the pleasure that we always takes in conceiving and producing works that take account of the characteristics that make the target space unique. Adapting ourselves to a given architecture and function enables us to fruitfully push our own creativity and technical boundaries.

Always eager to optimize the integration of its works into various spaces, JMW Studio has developed innovative hanging and lighting systems that bring the beauty of the works to perfection, while also ensuring their durability, facilitating their installation and maintenance, and guaranteeing the safety of users.

Passion & Production

 JMW Studio makes its own glass. This glass results from the fusion—in a 1280-degree oven—of a mixture of silica and minerals imported from Sweden in the form of granules. Fusion is a technical process that requires concentration, patience and vigilance. Note that the fusion of glass silica only produces transparent glass. Color is added to the transparent glass at the moment of blowing. This is imported from New Zealand in the form of pigmented bars that are heated before use.

Freehand glassblowing is one of the variants of glassblowing. Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert never uses a rigid mold to create the final shape of an object. He draws not only from know-how that he has been developing for over twenty years, but also from mastered gestures and the intelligence of his hand, and places trust in his experienced eye. He has to constantly play with gravity, movement and the temperature of the material. He can also count on the members of his team, from the least to the most experienced, to help him in his task.

Just before blowing a work, the whole team is deep in concentration. Everyone knows what they have to do. Over and over again, they repeat the gestures and choreography that will need to be performed for two whole hours to create a Cloud, a Fog, a Winter Light, a Lune d’hiver or a Pilule, without any pause or discontinuity; there will hardly be enough time to catch their breath. Some of them warm up, preparing to subject their bodies to a great deal of strain, while others get the tools in place and start heating up the ends of the pipes, and still others check the temperature of the ovens and heat up the colors. Then the blowing of the work can begin.

Using a blowpipe, Jeremy carries out the first parsimonious gathering of the transparent molten glass. He blows the first air bubble into the glass. Then a whole burgeoning world starts to turn, and keeps turning until it finds its destiny. The blower continuously rotates the pipe, alternating between blowing and marbling, tirelessly shaping a “ball” of glass, mastering the forces that act upon it, remaining vigilant in order to anticipate its movements and reactions.

Depending on the work, a certain number of transparent glass gatherings is necessary to continue shaping the form, as well as a certain number of intermediate steps to add color and integrate decorations. Then the pipe gets heavy, the glass ball at its end now weighs 30 to 45 kg, it gets hotter and hotter, the trips to the oven get more frequent, but all of the energy in the room is directed at the same goal: creating the uncreatable, sculpting a molten liquid and keeping it at the right temperature.

Then comes the most crucial point in the blowing process, the one that decides everything: the final phase in the blowing and reheating of the work. Every gesture must be controlled and meticulously executed at the right time. The harmony, connection and synchronization between the various members of the team must be perfect, even if everyone is tired, because any mistake might lead to failure or injury, and if the smallest drop of sweat falls in the wrong place at the wrong time, this could provoke a veritable explosion of glass. Movements, gestures and blowing must be infinitely precise in order to produce a material that is highly delicate (taken to the limit, its thickness can be close to one millimeter), very large (some works reach a diameter of 90 cm), and has colors and decorations whose finish is extraordinarily high-quality for the complexity and size of the work.

Little by little, the form takes shape. However, the battle is not won just yet. The team must find a little more energy in order to finalize the process. When the final shape is achieved, the work is separated from the blowpipe—a suspenseful moment when everyone holds their breath. Once separated, it is place in the cooling arch, at 510°.

The day after the blowing, if and only if the cooling has gone well, the work is ready for the finishing touches. Then work begins on the cold glass. The work is cut, pierced and cleaned, sometimes hand-sanded in order to achieve a brushed look, some others being shined.

Works that are intended to be used as lamps are connected to a hanging system fully conceived by the studio team, as well as a customised lighting system that is adapted (dimensions, power, colour temperature) according to the characteristics of the creations (sizes, shapes, colours, patterns, finishes) and the places for which they are intended (ceiling types, power supply, etc.).

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