De Leeuw at the France Pavilion of the Osaka World Expo

On 10 May 2025, the France Pavilion of the Osaka World Expo welcomed De Leeuw, to represent French craftsmanship in the field of the electric guitar.

The France Pavilion, operated by COFREX under Commissioner General Jacques Maire, was a hymn to Love, with the Japanese legend of the red thread as its guiding motif, Akai Ito, that invisible bond uniting those destined to meet. It presented French savoir-faire to visitors, from haute couture to the crafts. It was in that setting that the De Leeuw atelier was invited, less than four years after its founding.

The day opened at sunset with a concert given from the panoramic balcony of the France Pavilion, to the Expo visitors gathered below. Kozaki Akihiro on guitar, Alex Lofoco on bass, and the atelier's instruments sounding out over the Osaka site. Once the concert was over, the Japanese press and invited guests moved into one of the Pavilion's salons, where the atelier presented its work and where Kozaki Akihiro and Ba Kamaboko played three pieces: an MS6 in Riviera Pool Blue, a SY in French walnut and figured sycamore maple, an SC5 bass in cedar burl.

France has made instrument making an art, from Pleyel's piano to Selmer's saxophone. The guitar too had its French masters, the Voboam family, luthiers in Paris under Louis XIV, whose instruments inlaid with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl are now held at the Metropolitan Museum. The electric guitar, for its part, was born two centuries and a half later, elsewhere, an industrial object designed to be assembled in series. What the De Leeuw atelier came to show in Osaka is that instrument sculpted as a piece of métiers d'art, from the log: lutherie, ébénisterie d'art, marquetry, carving, gathered in a single hand, that of Quentin De Leeuw, Maître Artisan d'Art.

Japan is not one destination among others for the atelier. It is the country that invented the notion of living heritage, applied to its master artisans; it is also one of the markets where De Leeuw instruments are presented, at Miyaji Kanda in Tokyo and Miki Gakki in Osaka. The red thread joins those who were meant to meet. In Osaka, it joined French lutherie d'art and the country that honours its artisans as treasures.

That evening, Osaka opened a sequence. The Élysée extended it, the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant State label sealed it. At the atelier, the work goes on: the same hands, the same woods, the same time given to every instrument.

Published 30 septembre 2025, updated 18 august 2026