A while back, Julie and I discovered a collection of handblown vases and bottles that look unearthed from an ancient era—see Design Sleuth: La Soufflerie’s Glassware. On a trip to Paris last year, I happened upon La Soufflerie’s store in Saint-Germain-des-Près and commented to the manager that if the atelier founders live in a place that looks anything like the boutique, we’d love to see it.
Many months later, Valentina Nobile surprised me with a batch of photos. She provided no background, and seeing knotty pine paneling and hand-me-down furnishings, I figured I was looking at her family’s inherited retreat from Paris.
YES, we were interested in featuring their cabin, I responded. Valentina set me straight: the woodsy chalet is actually her family’s Paris duplex in the 15th arrondissement, near Montparnasse; she and her husband (and La Soufflerie co-founder), Sébastien Nobile, designed and built it themselves. “We were actually among the first private people in Paris to be able to buy roof rights and build our own place. Sébastien is the one who did most of the construction with his own hands. It’s an ecologically responsible home, all made out of wood with cork insulation.”
Join us for a tour of their urban hideaway (and scroll to the end to see it coming together).
Photography by Louis Daumur, courtesy of La Soufflerie (@lasoufflerie).
Above: Before their two children were born, Valentina and Sébastien lived in a studio apartment in their 1910 building. The four-story walkup “happened to be sandwiched between two taller buildings—so we saw that we could elevate it,” says Valentina, explaining how their DIY plan was hatched. It took five years and a lot of negotiating for them to secure the roof rights—”we were among the first to benefit from La Loi ALUR, a law that passed in 2014 allowing, among other things, for people to take down roofs and build on top of them.”
It took can-do and savoir faire. Valentina and Sébastien designed their place together. Valentina doggedly worked through the permissions process, and Sébastien, who is a sculptor, glassblower, and master plaster caster, among other things, spent 18 months building the duplex, which was completed in 2017. He teaches mold making at the Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, and one of his students, William Wick, an architect on the verge of retiring, stepped in and helped with the structural planning and worked with Paris Charpente, the company that built the duplex’s pre-fabricated frame.
The bud vase shown here is La Soufflerie’s Bougeoir Bulles Framboise; €29.
Above: Valentina and Sébastien both grew up in Paris but come from international families: Valentina’s parents are Italian and American, Sébastien’s are Swiss, and their apartment displays inherited elements and influences. Prior to building it, Sébastien converted a garage into La Soufflerie’s wood-paneled studio, which established the Swiss Family Robinson look that he refined for their living quarters and later their boutique: “we wanted something with an organic feel and without drywall—our duplex has a wooden framework, like a tree house, and is as eco friendly as possible,” says Valentina.
The walls and ceiling are pine and the floor is waxed oak. A lot of the furnishings, including the 1930s cherry barrel chairs and glass vitrine, came out of Valentina’s grandparents’ Milan apartment—the latter holds 1920s Venetian stemware “from when my grandparents got married.” Their sofa is Hay’s Arbour Two Seater.
Above: Valentina and Sébastien met when she inquired about renting studio space from him. At the time, she was was a painter/photographer, and Sébastien was one of Paris’s few glassmakers. The two embarked on a project to help reinvigorate the dying art of mouth-blown glassblowing: they spent their honeymoon traveling by camper for three months to the ancient sites in Jordan and Syrian where glass blowing originated. On return, in 2009, they created four vases out of recycled glass and sold them by bike to Paris florists—and La Soufflerie was launched.
The company has grown enormously—they now run several glassblowing studios around the world and sell their wares internationally at notably reasonable prices (Julie and I first came across them at John Derian’s shops in Provincetown and NYC). But they remain committed to using recycled glass as their base material, employing the age-old mouth-blown approach, and to helping teach the craft and support a global community of glass artisans (part of their business is nonprofit and all operate as waste-free as possible: their wares ship wrapped in recycled paper in recycled cardboard boxes to which they add protective cardboard compartments.
Shown on their coffee table: La Soufflerie’s Porta Candele Transparent, Red Wine Glass, Soliflore Bosselé White, and Head Vase.
Above: Midcentury Italian chairs surround the family’s farmhouse table. Note the wrap-around tall shelf that holds books, souvenirs, Valentina’s old camera collection, and La Soufflerie prototypes. Several times a year they get up on a ladder to dust it.
The apartment’s glass hanging lights are 1960s Italian, passed down from Valentina’s father.
Above: The kitchen’s green granite counters and backsplash served as inspiration for the walls, which are stuc marbre, an age-old trompe l’oeil technique of using pigmented stucco to imitate stone. “They don’t make it anymore, ” Valentina tells us, “but at one time, a lot the entrances and churches in Paris were finished this way.”
Admiring the globe light? See Remodelista Reconnaissance: Festive, Candy-Like Pendant Lights.
Above: The walls and backsplash are green-veined granite paired with stucco walls, which were created by a specialist artisan just before he retired (scroll to the end to see them in progress). The living room also has a two-toned marble stucco frieze that runs atop the pine paneling (scroll up for a look).
Above: The wood-burning stove that rises in the middle of the duplex is a Godin, made in a cast-iron foundry outside of Paris (firewood comes from the family’s camping retreat in an orchard 40 minutes away, and the apartment is also heated by radiators). The basketball hoop with a homemade backboard is used (with a special ball) by the 12-year-old in residence.
Above: Sébastien did the majority of the finish work himself, including treating all of the pine paneling with a Marunaka Supersurfacer, a Japanese planing machine that makes the wood silky soft. His vintage bike—used on special occasions only—is a French Motobecane that he had restored in Portugal.
Above: The winding, partially open stair was custom-built by L’Escalier Traditionnel de Lutèce—”we wanted it to be Parisian style, with a railing on one side,” says Valentina, noting that the wall behind it curves, too. The iron rails are modeled after the ones in the building’s stairwell.
Above: The door behind the stair—leading to the family TV room/guest room/office—is also curved and had to be made-to-order and installed by a specialist. “Flat surfaces here wouldn’t have made sense visually, at least not to us,” says Valentina. Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and two baths; the family keep their top floor private.
In Progress
Above: The first step in the construction process was adding scaffolding to the building, front and back, and taking down the existing roof. Even then, Valentina says she wasn’t certain the project would actually get built until “the guys showed up with the crane.” The family lived in the neighborhood during the six months of construction.
Above: Paris Charpente, specialists in wooden construction, worked with architect William Wick to prefabricate the structural walls of the duplex, which, Valentina says, “got dropped in place like Tetris pieces.” 
Above: Eco-friendly cork insulation from Portugal and a new zinc roof were added to the open framework shown here.
Above: The stair and curved wall in progress.
Above: Eduardo at work—an early stage in the long process of creating the kitchen’s marble stucco walls.
Here are three more creatives at home:
