Valentine is renowned globally for her unique calligraphic sculptures, made from wire, exhibiting her first collection at Maison & Objet and nominated for the prestigious design prize, the Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris. She draws from all manner of texts, including famous French poems, plays, mantras and sayings, and uses free hand iron work to make the floating words in space and on walls in her signature curly cursif typography. Every line she shapes, moulds and writes, quite remarkably, is from a single length of wire.

After developing her craft of jewellery making and sculpting in space with metal wires, there was a magical turning point for Valentine. She met Claude Picasso, the artist’s only surviving son, igniting an idea for a collaboration. Inspired by Picasso’s one-line animal pencil drawings, sketched without lifting a hand from the paper, Valentine wished to capture the spirit of Picasso’s animal drawings in jewellery, reproducing each animal identically in continuous golden thread. With unique access to Picasso’s archives and sketchbooks, Valentine reimagined the famous animal sketches, including birds, camels, bulls and flies, into three-dimensional golden sculptural pieces of jewellery named “La Bestiaire Picasso”.