When the unexpected blends with the ordinary.
©PaulineChardin
Driven by their desire to bring goodness, beauty, and wonder into everyday life, artist Inès Mélia and Paris’s oldest chocolate shop, À la Mère de Famille, found their destinies entwined. The marriage of their expertise and creativity gave rise to unique pieces that are both Easter egg cups and decorative candle holders…
“ The idea behind this collaboration was to create objects that are both functional and surprising, capable of taking on multiple roles. I love inventing new forms that combine utility and creativity, and this project was the perfect opportunity to explore this vision.
Inès Mélia
©PaulineChardin
Just as the Maison shapes cocoa beans and dried fruits to create its own traditional Easter egg recipes, Inès Mélia expresses her love for ceramics, a medium through which she gives form to an imagination she translates into unique creations with a surrealist touch.
“Ceramics, with their malleability and ability to capture the essence of forms, became the ideal medium to bring this vision to life. Some pieces directly evoke the egg, a universal and primordial form, a symbol of life and renewal. Others take on the delicacy of a flower, where, as the egg is consumed, the yolk appears as the vibrant heart of the corolla.”
Practical information:
Each glazed ceramic piece is offered with a hard-boiled egg composed of a hazelnut-almond praline covered in dark or milk chocolate.
Small flower egg cup and candle holder: €65
Medium egg cup and candle holder: €120
Large flower egg cup and candle holder: €180
Limited edition available exclusively at the historic À la Mère de Famille boutique at 35 rue du faubourg Montmartre – Paris IX, as well as on the lameredefamille.com online store from March 17, 2025
À la Mère de Famille
“ For three years, the Maison has given artists free rein to imagine a collection of egg cups for Easter. After our fruitful collaborations with Pia Chevalier and Marion Graux, the idea behind this project with Inès Mélia was to create objects that are both functional and surprising, with forms that combine utility and creativity. »
The Dolfi family
Inès Mélia
“ What fascinates me about today’s world is the object. The first work I was commissioned to create was paid for in livres. I was 14 years old. I love the value we give to an object by depriving it of its contents. The emotional connection we can have with it. The object of love, the object of desire, the idea of man as an object, of woman as an object, the transitional object, the sacred object. Man invented the consumer society, which is a child-like society in which everything is seen as an object. So I play with the objects around me. Domesticity is one of my favorite themes. »
©Marcelo Gomes
Born in Orange in 1990, artist Inès Mélia has lived and worked in Paris since 2008. Through sculpture, painting, photography, or music, she composes from often trivial motifs that her hand moves with wit and precision. Blending abstraction, literature, and poetry with a resolutely surrealist approach, her synesthetic approach to music and art has led her to effortlessly combine different forms of expression—sculpture, photography, painting, ceramics—which constantly intersect and reinvent themselves in a fertile dialogue. After her series The Domestic Life, in which she assembles everyday objects (books, tableware, etc.), she continues her exploration of intimacy, gender prejudices, and beyond, of what the microcosm of the home reveals about our relationship with the world.
