Valentine Schlegel is born in 1925 in Sète, France in a family of craftsman. The city of Sète marks deeply the childhood of Valentine. She discovers in Sète the first of her passions, the sea, the navigation and the fishing. She ob- serves the white mainsails, picking seashellsand spend hours in her father workshop, contemplating tools, learning some basics of ulphostery. At the age of 16, she enters in the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier, where she study painted and realised painted fresca. She discovers and learns the techniques of the fire during scouting. She is also passionate for everyday objets ; cutlery, pitchers, bowls and so on. In 1947, she works as a propsman for the theater piece ‘La tragédie du roi Richard II’ which will be presented at the forst festival d’Avignon with Jean Vilar. During the four following years, she works successively as a stage manager and cos- tumer. During this time, she creates small san- tons (small fugures in terracotta from the south of france) that she offers to the comedians. She arrives in Paris and share a workshop with her friend, met earlier at the Beaux Arts, Fré- dérique Bourguet (who will after that found the duo Les Argonautes), et focus on a production of utilitarian objets, plates and jugs, inspired by the antics creations of the mediterranean. From 1955 , her creations takes shapes more and more abstracts and organics, borrowed to the sea and the earth (bulbs, buds).