By diverting Damascus steel from its original bellicose use – the manufacture of supple, hard and fascinating swords – to create various objects and shapes that Jean-Louis HURLIN takes an unsuspected way.

From his beginnings with objects, furniture and railings in wrought iron, Jean-Louis HURLIN has shown a resolutely contemporary approach which has earned him orders from private, public and luxury companies. Damascus steel allows him to explore the object in what it can question: offbeat objects, sharp cuts, impregnable blades. Then the object is free from functional requirements and acquires strength and life independent of that of the material. The blades, the Damascus steel books, the spheres are both the subject and its representation: the object acquires a status as an image, a source of thought.

Jean-Louis also makes beautiful objects in damask steel (jewelry boxes, bottle-openers, reliquary, buckles of belt...), his workshop has already seen many trainees and, when he was appointed Master of Art in 2000, Jean-Louis trained Gabriel GOERGER for three years in the techniques of damask steel. For several years he taught the technics for forging iron at the SEP of the Lycée Boutet in Monvel as well as at the GRETA in Lunéville and the CERFAV in Vannes-le-Châtel.