The JAD at Avril: Fifteen Makers Who Want to Be Copied

A place that steps outside its own walls for five days is ordinary enough. An exhibition of art makers whose brief is to make reproducible objects is far less so — it is, in fact, the opposite of what the craft usually stands for.

What the JAD is, and where it comes from

The JAD — Jardin des métiers d'Art et du Design — is based in Sèvres, in the Hauts-de-Seine. It is a residency: workshops, makers who work there year-round, and a place to exhibit. For Paris Design Week it left home and settled in Paris, at Avril, from 9 to 13 September. Entry was free.

The choice of venue was no accident. Avril occupies a former village of Bastille artisans, passage du Cheval Blanc, and will not open officially until November 2026: the exhibition was therefore held in a place that does not quite exist yet.

The brief, and why it matters

Fifteen resident makers and three guest designers took on the same challenge: to reinvent their craft through the spirit of DIY — that is, to imagine objects that are legible, adaptable or reproducible. Around the exhibition, hands-on workshops, talks and a café showed the process rather than only the result.

It is worth weighing what that sentence asks of an art maker. The whole craft rests on the gesture that cannot be redone: the one-off piece, the recognisable hand, the value that lies in scarcity. Asking a maker to design something anyone could understand and remake is asking them to give up precisely what commands their price.

Why it interests us

We spend the year telling an edition from a copy, and explaining why copying a piece without rights pays no one. This exhibition takes the problem from the other end, and that is a healthy thing: there is a reproducibility that is chosen, owned, documented by the one who drew it — and it has nothing to do with counterfeiting.

The difference comes down to a single word: the author's intent. An object a maker designs to be remade is an object given. An object remade without them is an object taken. It is the same form and it is not the same gesture.

Going there

The JAD hors les murs was held at Avril, 9 passage du Cheval Blanc, 75011 Paris, from 9 to 13 September 2026, free entry. The presentation is over. Avril will open officially in November 2026; the JAD itself can be visited in Sèvres year-round.

The Beyit move: photograph a piece and scan it — the tool tells you who edits it, at what price, and what exists around it.