Eric Berthes

Upon graduating from the famous Boulle school and ESDI, Eric Berthes was nominated for a Janus de l’Etudiant award at the Comité Colbert, picking up first prize at the Salon de la Decoration along the way. He went on to start his own creation studio, choosing a name full of promise: PLANET DESIGN.
Industrial creation is Berthes’ bread and butter. He has designed computers for the Cibox Company, he works for Packard Bell and Uniross, and he designed office desks for Lexon and Alba.
Berthes is a pragmatist, which keeps his creations from being ego-driven. But he also cultivates a taste for luxury that he satisfies by working with the most prestigious champagne houses. He has created ranges of champagne buckets and elegant settings for Mumm, Bollinger, Krug, Ruinart, Lanson, Hennessy and even Remy Martin, as well as other accessories dedicated to oenology and the decorative arts. In addition he has been collaborating since 2001 with the Orfèvrerie d’Anjou, renowned for its manufacture of brilliant pewter.
Berthes nurtures a passion for Creation, in the empirical sense of the term. His creative process extends way beyond the object itself and its production. He finds the global concept more inspiring than the actual product.
Creating a beautiful chair is in his view the most difficult of style exercises. “Chairs are complicated objects. The problem lies in achieving functionality, comfort and style all at the same time.”
He does not shy away from creating expensive prototypes and exhibits them in international trade shows. The costs are high but that’s the price of freedom: Berthes works without constraints, purely for his own satisfaction.
January 2003: The first collection made from rubber and aluminum, EMMA. Berthes then started work on the Corian® “FIFLEX” range, in partnership with Dupont de Nemours and the Créa Diffusion Company.
September 2004: He took the SIALU aluminum chair to the Maison & Objet trade show. This chair was inspired by an exploration of plenums and vacuums.
September 2005: The Doonut chair. This unusual glass fiber chair is made almost exclusively by hand, the manufacture of a single part requiring almost a week of work. Half objet d’art, half luxury item, “this armchair could be described as ‘architecturally comfortable’ - it's as easy on the eye as it is on the seat”, says the designer.
Berthes has retained the rigor of straight lines and perfectly proportioned curves from his training. He aims to design tomorrow's objects, anticipating the desires of the third millennium. The Doonut armchair is in some ways the culmination of this project, which is now orienting Berthes towards other items of furniture.