randi

CLP Design is pleased to announce its new partnership with Solymac International, manufacturers of the Delaubrac line of residential ranges. CLP Design Ranges, a newly-created division of CLP Design, will now be distributing the Delaubrac line throughout the Americas.

Solymac is one of the top tier of manufacturers of French culinary equipment, with a solid and respected history in Europe. However, the brand has very little name recognition in America, despite its history of producing components for other better-known manufacturers such as La Cornue (until the mid-90’s, La Cornue’s cooktops were manufactured by Solymac). Among the distinguishing characteristics of the Delaubrac line are a true chassis-style contruction (the entire range is built on a structural frame of tube steel, none of the visible parts are load-bearing), the largest interior oven dimensions of any comparable French range, and a solid brass vent junction and chimney.
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randi

Chris was recently interviewed by the York Daily Record (YDR) for a featured series called “Unzipping York”. The purpose of the monthly series is to uncover a diamond in the rough or an untold story from each of the county’s 57 postal zip codes. We were this month’s diamond in the rough for the postal zip code 17329. The full story can be found here. A big thank you to YDR for featuring our work and to Jennifer for her enthusiasm and patience.
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Chris

Last week we took the call from a designer who’s building a Florida house styled after a turn of the century French mansion. The reference photo for the kitchen equipment comes from this photo of a 1912 Fourneau Baudon island range currently housed at the Nissim de Camondo Museum in Paris.

Now aside from the fact that this era and style is one of our greatest passions, our first reaction was sheer wonder at the beauty of the engineering and construction of this range. We pride ourselves on knowing as much as anybody does about the history and aesthetic of French ranges, but this was one we hadn’t seen before. When we looked more carefully at the picture, though, a few things began to stick out.

This mansion, built for the Comte Moïse de Camondo by architect Réne Sergent, was itself built down to the details after an earlier mansion—Marie Antoinette’s palace in Versailles, the Petit Trianon. Almost the entire design for the Camondo building could have come straight from the 1780’s, with the exception of this piece of cooking equipment. Obviously the client was passionate enough about his kitchen, and apparently passionate enough about this particular range, to break the continuity of the rest of his design to fit this modern construction into it.
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Chris

As part of this blog, occasionally we’ll let you in on a few secrets of our work. This is a breakdown of what is entailed in our hand-hammered copper, which we use on countertops, backsplashes, and range hoods.

The entire process begins with a set of customized hammers like this one. Although it may look like an implement of torture, this is actually a standard peening hammer, which we gave a bit of extra texture by melting a pattern onto the tip with some silver solder. These textures wear out fairly quickly when you’re working on a large job, so we typically start hammering with one pattern, then come back with a different texture head to give the surface the variety we look for in hand hammering.

This counter is very small, just a 24″ section for display, so we’re doing the whole thing with one pass:

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