Sébastien Léon explores the boundaries of what design can be. The New York–based sculptor is driven by curiosity, creating furnishings that test the limits of what is technically possible. “My mission is to build a coherent world out of my discoveries, one creation at a time,” he tells Business of Home. “Each work is a fragment of a larger universe that invites us to imagine different ways of living.”
Growing up in Blois, a historic town in France’s Loire Valley, Léon was immersed in Renaissance art and history. “Leonardo da Vinci spent the final years of his life there, and growing up near the museum dedicated to his inventions had a lasting influence on me,” says the artist.
After earning a Master of Business Administration in fashion and design from SDA Bocconi in Milan, he moved to New York in 1999 and founded Formavision, a creative studio that provides design services for international brands. From there, he went on to work as a curator and exhibition designer for Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet before moving to Los Angeles to focus on his own furniture designs. “I immersed myself in making,” he says. “I learned about glass, casting, mold-making, metal fabrication and other techniques directly alongside specialists.”
Léon’s first significant body of work grew out of a 2019 commission for gemstone company Gemfields at Design Miami. “I created illuminated glass sculptures inspired by the crystalline growth and colors of emeralds and rubies,” he says. “That experience revealed glass as an endless material for exploration, and it became one of the central languages of my practice.”
Glass and metal are the materials Léon returns to most often. “Color behaves unpredictably with glass, making every piece unique,” he explains. “Metal attracts me for its reflective qualities—by reflecting their surroundings, mirrors and polished metals invite us to the other side of reality. Both glass and metal are transformative, and I think of them as collaborators rather than passive mediums.”
Léon describes his creative process as “highly intuitive,” focused more on the techniques required to make each work than on the completed design. “I let each piece evolve until it reveals what it wants to become,” he says. “The first of my Mirage silvered-glass sculptures, for example, existed for months before I realized it should become a light. That moment of revelation is how I know a work has found its final form.”
In 2023, he began an intensive 18-month residency at Ralph Pucci in New York, with the goal of expanding his material vocabulary. “I worked alongside the brand’s in-house sculptor, Michael Evert, and the team, immersing myself in traditional sculptural techniques, from hand-modeling clay to mold-making and casting,” he says. “Beyond learning new skills, I gained confidence knowing that my experimental ideas could be realized with the rigor and quality that the brand is known for.”
The collaboration culminated in “Inca City,” a 25-piece collection that is currently on exhibit at Ralph Pucci through October 15. Inspired by a geological formation on Mars, the series comprises everything from a futuristic resin swivel chair to a resin-coated coffee table and an ultrashaggy, fringe-covered wool rug. “The collection blurs the boundaries between function and illusion,” says Léon. “Rather than simply creating new furniture, I wanted to propose a new language for the home, encouraging people to rethink how they live with design, and how those objects can open our mindscape.”
Today, Léon works from a studio in Tribeca, where he recently completed The Echoes of Our Dreams—a large-scale stainless steel sculpture with integrated audio—for the Nomad Hamptons art fair in Water Mill. “I’m also exploring new techniques involving glass-and-metal fusion and constantly developing new works with Ralph Pucci,” he says. “Every project is another chapter in my evolving fictional world.”
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