Hello and welcome to La Ciotat, a picturesque seaside village that's home to a wealth of young entrepreneurs and artisans. It's here that Emily and Camille have united to bring you TERRE/MER, a unique retreat by and for women uniting their shared passions for ceramics and cuisine.
Over the course of a long weekend, this retreat offers you the opportunity to relax, reflect, and create, coming away with new recipes, your own works of art, and most importantly, friendships to last a lifetime.
A Story of Friendship
If a TERRE/MER retreat paves the way for such lasting friendships, it's in large part thanks to founders Emily and Camille, who became fast friends over a decade ago.
(We know, we know, they don't look nearly old enough…)
Camille and Emily first met while working at a French language summer camp in a small southern French village with a unique pedagogy based on full immersion and hands-on experience. Over the course of their years there, they soon discovered their shared passions for food, art, and learning. They dreamed even then of creating a similar experience for adults rooted in their shared values: creativity and authenticity, sustainability and slow travel, community-building and kindness.
They soon went on to pursue their own careers: Camille as a ceramicist and product designer – and later the founder of ceramics workshop ICI l’Atelier, Emily as a writer specialized in France’s culinary traditions and wealth, including cheese.
But every time they saw one another, they found themselves dreaming of the day they would be able to create the retreat of their dreams. And in 2022, TERRE/MER was born.
Cheese Lovers Unite!
Emily often says that it was cheese that brought her to France 16 years ago, and while that's not the whole truth (she's also got a Master's degree in 19th century French literature from the Sorbonne), cheese has indeed become an indelible part of her Parisian life.
Born and raised in New York City, Emily showed a passion for cheese early on. At two years old, she got her first taste of Parmigiano-Reggiano, which she dubbed "spungy," a word of her own creation to describe the spicy, tangy aromas. These days, her vocabulary has grown, and she opts far more often for adjectives like "barnyardy" or "funky" when describing France's most famous export, whether writing for publications like the BBC or Atlas Obscura, judging cheeses in international cheese contests, or on her guided tours of Paris' culinary bounty.
Her love of French food isn't limited to its cheese. Long intrigued by the history of specific ingredients and recipes, her natural curiosity and insatiable appetite has led her to explore everything from the Southern French candy that soared in popularity due to traffic jams on the highway to the reason why France experienced a Dijon mustard following heatwaves in Canada. And her conversations with chefs have helped her to master classics from French onion soup to the perfect omelette – recipes she's excited to share with you!
At TERRE/MER, Emily's passion for cuisine is omnipresent, whether she’s creating unique tableware in the ceramics studio to help participants craft aioli from scratch or sharing the history of the croissant over a typical French breakfast.
Not only will she serve up three delicious, local meals a day, but she'll offer culinary workshops to show you the ins and outs of local cuisine and even take you on a guided tour of some of La Ciotat's tastiest artisan shops.
A Marriage of Form and Function
Camille Drozdz's passion for art and design began at a young age, but it wasn't until she moved to Limoges that she discovered her love of porcelain. Clay has since become the main medium she uses to create tableware, furniture, and more, all with an eye towards marrying form and function. She notably won a Rochebobois award for her ceramic-and-wood partition, which will soon be released by the company.
A native of the Parisian suburbs, Camille's passion for art has motivated her many travels, from the months she spent living and working in Copenhagen, one of Europe's design capitals, to ceramics retreats in Morocco, where she learned time-honored techniques at the elbow of local artisans.
It was in 2017 that she fell in love with La Ciotat, where she has since built her life and her career.
Camille is the co-founder of ICI l'Atelier, the ceramics studio in the heart of La Ciotat where she crafts her gorgeous tableware and imparts her love of the medium with others by way of her regular ceramics classes. This passion, know-how, and practiced pedagogy are at the heart of our days at TERRE/MER.
Retreat participants glean the benefits of her keen eye and gentle approach over the course of ten hours of intensive, hands-on time in the studio. Anyone from practiced potters to those who have never even handled clay can take full advantage of Camille's expertise in conceiving and crafting their dream tableware, the perfect souvenir of your time in the South!
If TERRE/MER sounds like a dream come true, that's because it is… ours! And if you’d like to join us on this adventure, there’s no time to waste.
Our next retreat is taking place April 11 to 14. Reach out to us to reserve your spot via our website, Instagram, or simply by replying to this email. We can't wait to hear from you!