Atelier Vime’s Provençal shop returns for a sublime seasonal outing

Aimee Farrell

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From the sanctuary of their sensitively restored 18th-century hôtel particulier in the Provençal village of Vallabrègues, Benoît Rauzy and Anthony Watson have quietly elevated the fate of a single material: wicker. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the secluded village was the epicentre of European basketry, and after the couple’s discovery of half-made woven baskets and design sketches during the 2016 renovation of their home – remnants of its previous incarnation as a wicker workshop – they were inspired to create Atelier Vime. The studio’s collections of French willow lighting, mirrors and furniture now have a huge following, and its newly updated seasonal store, La Maison Vime, has already earned cult status.

Atelier Vime works with 30 weavers from across France to produce its handmade designs, some wrought from its own willow crop harvested at its smallholding on Rauzy’s family farm in Brittany. The products are sold online, as well as at select shops such as Cutter Brooks in the Cotswolds. Over the past seven years, the studio has evolved to encompass everything from marbleised mixed-earth Uzès ceramics to terracotta urn candles to artist-made notebooks, encapsulating an aesthetic that’s defined by rustic elegance.

Rauzy and Watson’s way of living ignites devotion among their 261k followers, who, in summer, are invited to enter their world with the “art de vivre” shop, La Maison Vime. Set in the former wicker workshop adjacent to their home, which they acquired in 2020, this recently renovated store has been known to inspire an emotive response from visitors. “People come to the shop, see the house first-hand and realise that everything we share is real,” says Rauzy.

La Maison Vime is the ultimate destination store. Aside from the local boulangerie and boucherie, it is the only shop in the village. It is located 25km north of Arles, on the left bank of the Rhône, and the journey through the Provençal countryside is central to the experience. The only sign you have arrived is the lone basket hanging from a wrought-iron bracket outside. Visitors then enter through an antique wooden door, along a hallway and out into a pebble courtyard that has been transformed into a leafy oasis of cypress, lemon and fig trees. The pebbles used for the space involved resurrecting a Rhône valley tradition known as calade, where rounded stones were typically drawn from the banks of the river, favoured for their role in flood prevention and ease of moving boats. Here, they are set against a huge terracotta frieze designed by New Zealand-based artist Wayne Pate and brought to life by the British tile-company Balineum. The panel forms an evocative backdrop to Atelier Vime’s wicker furniture and tableware (from €90), including beautifully handprinted table linens (from €90) created with French designer Marie-Victoire de Bascher.

La Maison Vime is a home store in the truest sense. There is a ground-floor kitchen filled with ceramics (from €48); a library complete with the couple’s best-loved books on design and gastronomy; a pale-blue bedroom with a canopy bed; and a simple drawing room with lime-washed walls and a shifting array of Atelier Vime editions, alongside the antique rattan, rope and wicker designs they’ve long collected (from €90). These are accompanied by a burgeoning offering of curated art – paintings and drawings largely drawn from the colourful and eclectic ’20s and ’30s, an era Rauzy calls “the real beginning of abstraction”.

Atelier Vime Editions wicker and metal Edith table lamp, €435

Atelier Vime Editions Beaucaire daybed, €7,200

In one of the main interior’s second-floor bathrooms is a mural depicting the Edenic gardens. Elsewhere are other painterly pieces, many by Pate: lampshades (from €90), ceramic tile renderings of Atelier Vime’s Medici vase (€32), and a rattan-and-wood cabinet decorated with hammered copper leaves (€10,800). It’s typical of the laidback, non-strategic style that Rauzy and Watson bring to the creative process, and artist collaborations. “It always happens very naturally,” says Rauzy.

New for the summer season is a debut line of utilitarian wicker for the home that spans laundry baskets to bottle-holders. But more enchanting still is the first foray into women’s accessories – the Vime bag (€1,200). In true Atelier Vime style, this bijou natural wicker carrier nods to 19th-century flower baskets. Designed with Raphaëlle Hanley, who has worked as an accessories designer for Saint Laurent, it also harks back to the swaggering spirit of the Incroyables and Merveilleuses, a posh 18th-century subculture and precursor of punk. “They were known for shifting the shape and the use of objects – and that’s what we have done here,” says Rauzy.

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The studio and store is a compelling second act for Rauzy and Watson, who previously worked as an environmental consultant and a stylist respectively. Its global success, which has drawn clients including Pierre Yovanovitch, has been a surprise. “We’re only doing what the inhabitants of the house did in the 1870s,” says Rauzy. “Making natural wicker by hand.”

The couple are now embarking on their next major transformation: a neglected château in Normandy. Its attics are a treasure trove of objects, antiques and mementoes from its noble past. Who knows where these discoveries will take them?

The Atelier Vime season will end on 3 September