Retraité, le néoniste continue de répondre à des commandes pour créer notamment des enseignes lumineuses. Midi Libre – W. N.
Denis Lambert souffle le verre au chalumeau. Midi Libre – W. N.
Based in Sète for a few years, this enthusiast also offers courses to make your own neon light fixture.
Denis Lambert has no shortage of creative projects. On his computer, he stops at a file called Sa Pouffrissime. A large octopus wearing a crown appears on the screen. A draft that he aims to transform into neon, “but I'm short of time at the moment”, says the sixty-year-old. Because, despite his retirement, this glassblower does not see the days go by. His workshop, set up on rue Marceau, a few meters from the Place de la République, is a good example of this hyperactivity. In addition to the light fixtures hanging on the walls, found on Leboncoin and repaired by him, there are glass tubes waiting to be bent and curved by blowtorch and burner. “I mainly respond to orders. Creation only comprises 30% of my creations” , says Denis Lambert. To whom we owe, on the Singular Island, the neon lights that adorn the façade of The Rio or the Café Fleurette.
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His workshop quickly hints at his passion. Midi Libre – W. N.
“I do more decorative than artistic”
A profession that has become a real passion over the years. And yet. Glassblowing was far from obvious for someone who, after leaving middle school, was looking for a “not too long” degree near his parents' home, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. He came across a high school, the only one in France, offering training in glassmaking with a blowtorch. Finally, the man who described himself “as a slacker”excels in the discipline and decides to continue with a vocational certificate in neon tube manufacturing. When the owner of a New York gallery specializing in neon lights comes to the school and offers him a job, the young man, looking for adventures abroad, jumps at the chance.
For two and a half years, Denis Lambert rubs shoulders with big names in this gallery in the Soho district. Until then used to creating commercial neon lights – like pharmacy crosses or laboratory equipment – he opens up to “a different logic”. “I discovered neon from a more artistic angle. I knew nothing about this environment. It was a real challenge to push my limits”, says the neon artist. Which does not prevent him from continuing to call himself a craftsman rather than an artist: “I do more decorative than artistic work, I don't rely too much on concepts”.
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Back on the other side of the Atlantic, after an experience in a subcontracting workshop in Munich, he was contacted by his old high school to replace a teacher. At the same time, he set up his sign company. Quickly “I realized that I couldn't manage everything”, says the man who, in 1996, threw himself entirely into teaching.
A new passion – “it was a pleasure to share with these kids what I loved” – that he merges with the restoration of neon signs. As he still does today from his workshop in Sète where he bought his first pied-à-terre in 2014. It is also there that he also offers introductory courses in blowtorch glassblowing or neon light manufacturing. A love of transmission and neon that makes him say with a smile: “I am like a Molière, I will die with a blowtorch”.
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