Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic On the sixth floor of a quintessential Haussmannian building in Paris\u2019s 7th arrondissement \u2014 past creamy stone walls, mosaic floors, stained glass windows and an ironwork cage lift \u2014 is the home of 63-year-old artist Sara\u00ef Delfendahl and her husband Philippe, a writer and editor. It\u2019s a space that is at turns bright and airy and higgledy piggledy.\u00a0\u201cI was pregnant with my middle child, Marc, when we moved in,\u201d says Delfendahl. \u201cI just loved the light. For me it was like a country home; it\u2019s a little charming.\u201d That was 28 years ago. But it wasn\u2019t until her three children had left home that Delfendahl really put her artistic stamp on the place. When the couple renovated last year, redoing the well-worn kitchen and bathroom, it presented an opportunity to showcase Delfendahl\u2019s ceramic works. Alongside her characterful sculptures, integral details have been crafted in clay.\u00a0\u201cI call Sara\u00ef \u2018the clay magician\u2019,\u201d says Laurence Bonnel, founder of Paris\u2019s Galerie Scene Ouverte, which has represented Delfendahl for the past six years and recently included her work in its award-winning booth at the Ceramic Brussels fair. Her work has been shown at Paris museums La Halle Saint-Pierre and Palais de Tokyo, and attracted collectors from Italy and Switzerland to India and China.\u00a0At home, her kitchen is an homage to her practice. The splashback is a tiled mural, with mystical creatures on a turquoise-green background. Its painterly texture is inspired by the work of German artist Markus L\u00fcpertz and was created with layers of glaze in multiple firings. On the ceiling a pair of bell-shaped lampshades resemble monsters with glowing eyes. A fruit basket, and the plaited handles on the cream-coloured kitchen cupboards are also Delfendahl\u2019s work; she has even glazed some of the floor tiles a deep green.\u201cI\u2019m really happy with how the kitchen turned out,\u201d says Delfendahl, making tea \u2014 served, of course, in her own mugs. \u201cI love to cook. I\u2019m very gourmand. My three children are very gourmand. Eating is at the heart of our family.\u201d Some of her plates and bowls feature images of her children etched into the clay.Other rooms have been given ceramic updates, too. In the entrance hall, an antique wooden chandelier has been augmented with floral forms; a small toilet has another Delfendahl splashback; venturing along a narrow, book-lined corridor brings you to a bathroom with two swirling pink and green ceramic murals around the bath and the shower. Soap dishes, a wall light and towel hooks in the shape of a fish and a bird are all part of what Delfendahl calls her \u201ccreative universe\u201d.\u00a0These interiors pieces are not something she creates to commission, though. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be someone who makes lamps to order,\u201d says Delfendahl, who trained first as a designer at Paris\u2019s L\u2019\u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure de Cr\u00e9ation Industrielle. \u201cStudying design leads to lots of things \u2014 lots of things I didn\u2019t want to do. I just wanted to be an artist.\u201d At first she focused on painting, until about 17 years ago when a friend introduced her to clay. \u201cI started to make some sculptures and just thought it was terrific,\u201d she says.A recent Paris exhibition at Galerie Sc\u00e8ne Ouverte was titled Vivre en Oiseau and showcased her largest ceramic works to date \u2014 a menagerie of birdlike clay creatures, in her signature raw and instinctual style, some more than a metre high. The gallery continues to show several sculptures upstairs and will also present Delfendahl\u2019s work at PAD Paris design fair this coming April. \u201cI have different phases with my work,\u201d she explains. \u201cThere was a time when I was making only unicorns. Then I was doing lots of lions. Another time it was crabs.\u201d Birds, she says \u201ccan transport us and make us dream of somewhere else\u201d.This exhibition was the first time she has shown her plates (originally designed for her home in a similar style to her kitchen tiles) and jewellery: glazed and sometimes gold-accented pendants she has long made for herself and friends. Delfendahl also creates wall-mounted sculptures: part-human, part-animal forms that look like mythological creatures. \u201cI call them figures in French; \u2018models\u2019 in English. I make them regularly; it\u2019s like a habit I go back to after doing the large sculptures.\u201d A troupe of them parade over the glazed double doors into her living room.\u00a0Most of the artwork not by Delfendahl, however, is sourced by Philippe, a former journalist who now runs his own publishing house, Exils, and holds exhibitions at his office on Rue du Regard. \u201cHe\u2019s passionate about paintings; he collects them \u2014 and also sells them,\u201d says Delfendahl.Recent subjects include 19th-century women painters and the paintings of Jules Agard \u2014 a ceramicist who worked with Picasso. At home, next to the dining table is a large oil painting \u2014 a 1597 depiction of the Venetian carnival \u2014 by Flemish painter Lodewijk Toeput. A cluster of gold-framed artworks next to the fireplace includes a 19th-century print attributed to French illustrator Gustave Dor\u00e9, and a blue and white plate by contemporary Amsterdam-based ceramicist Ruan Hoffmann. \u201cHe found my sculptures on Instagram and we made an exchange,\u201d says Delfendahl. There are still works to hang after the renovation, she says. \u201cWe have big discussions at dinner about what should go where,\u201d adds her son Marc, an assistant director who studied film in Los Angeles and is visiting his parents. \u201cI think we enjoy debating it more than doing it.\u201d\u00a0As well as the artworks, the furniture too is a mishmash of styles and eras. Nearly all the pieces come from auctions and flea markets. \u201cPhilippe found them, but we chose them together,\u201d she says. \u201cI pay attention to what\u2019s going on in design but it\u2019s not that important to me.\u201d\u00a0A curvy chrome, mirror and glass coffee table displaying butterfly specimens is particularly intriguing. \u201cWe don\u2019t know who designed it but we find it very poetic,\u201d she says. \u201cUnfortunately, it is quite damaged, but we are not parting with it.\u201d\u00a0The dining table and chairs, meanwhile, are mid-century Nordic. Sometimes Delfendahl makes some ceramics here \u2014 especially the jewellery. \u201cBut now, more and more, I work at our home in the countryside, where I have an atelier and a big kiln,\u201d she says. Near the town of Dreux, an hour\u2019s drive west of Paris, the large ch\u00e2teau, where the couple usually spend several days a week, has been in Philippe\u2019s family for more than 100 years.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s extraordinary,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was badly damaged during the war and afterwards Philippe\u2019s father renovated part of it, but about half of it is still derelict, taken over by spiders \u2014 and that\u2019s where I have installed myself because I have lots of space. And I need it! I make so much. I start early in the morning and often work late into the night.\u201dIt\u2019s been a long road to recognition. \u201cI\u2019ve been an artist for a very long time,\u201d she says, \u201cbut [up until relatively recently] I didn\u2019t have many opportunities to show my work.\u201d This changed when her daughter, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne, encouraged her to post her ceramics on Instagram. \u201cIt has been a revolution for me,\u201d she says. As well as connecting her with a gallery and collectors, it has brought her into contact with other artists. One such is Klara Kristalova, who creates similarly surreal and fantastical ceramic figures, and has them strewn around her own home and garden in \u200b\u200bNorrt\u00e4lje, Sweden.On Delfendahl\u2019s mantelpiece, some of the objects are an ode to her rural retreat: nestled next to a pair of grand, early 19th-century candlesticks are a couple of squashes, grown in the garden. \u201cI find them very pretty so they are sculptures before we eat them,\u201d she laughs.Delfendahl\u2019s artistic vision for her home is not yet complete. In the living room, she plans to add tiles to the fireplace and two light fixtures with multiple ceramic elements hung on chains. How does it feel to be surrounded by her own work? \u201cI love it,\u201d she exclaims. \u201cAt first, I was a little afraid that I wouldn\u2019t like it, living every day surrounded by my own creations\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009it\u2019s a lot. But for the moment I am very content.\u201d\u00a0Sara\u00ef Delfendahl\u2019s work will be exhibited by Galerie Sc\u00e8ne Ouverte at PAD Paris design fair, April 2-6 Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic On the sixth floor of a quintessential Haussmannian building in Paris\u2019s 7th arrondissement \u2014 past creamy stone walls, mosaic floors, stained glass windows and an ironwork cage lift \u2014 is the home of 63-year-old artist Sara\u00ef Delfendahl and her husband Philippe, a writer and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-224497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224499,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224497\/revisions\/224499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}