After creating the brand image of La Cornue, the luxury kitchen range manufacturer, Xavier Dupuy has set himself a new challenge: to modernise fine French copperware. This time his focus is the world of bathrooms, and the development of a unique brand of washbasins made exclusively of metal. French copperware reached the height of its popularity in the early 20th century, but practically disappeared on the death of the renowned artist and craftsman Jean Dunand in the 1940s. Xavier Dupuy’s goal is to revive the art of metalwork design and develop it abroad. Forget the dated image of the old copper sink! Xavier Dupuy named his new brand Bassines but has reinvented that old-fashioned fixture, transforming it into a precious contemporary object. In tandem with his long-standing partner Laurent Besseas, a graduate of the École Boulle college of applied arts and design, and designer of the furniture collections for La Cornue, he wanted to produce a finely crafted everyday object on an industrial scale. The Bassines washbasins are highly technological objects designed using the best technical advances.