Baccarat Marks 20 Years of Collaboration With Philippe Starck
FACET TIME: Guests at Baccarat’s dinner Monday night in honor of Philippe Starck sat in a pitch black room while waiters — dressed all in black like ninjas with tiny lamps on their foreheads — scurried to and fro, plucking placement cards, adding candles, wine glasses, vases and long-stemmed roses.
Before exiting the room, they rang a small crystal bell with a red pendant clapper to indicate that the meal was about to commence. When the lights came up, the likes of Farida Khelfa, Emmanuel Perrotin, Elie Top, Jean-Baptiste Mondino and Charles de Vilmorin gasped in wonder at the sparkling table setting and the ballroom’s Rococo splendor, its chandeliers duplicated to infinity in the mirrors.
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Hoisting one of Starck’s newest Baccarat designs, a slender Champagne flute with a pinched rim, Baccarat chief executive officer Maggie Henriquez proposed a toast to Starck’s creative prowess, which has propelled some of the French crystal firm’s most successful objects for 20 years.
“The love is there, and absolute respect,” she said. “He is truly an extraordinary person.”
Starck confessed awe for the raw material Baccarat employs, marveling at how sand and fire can produce such a magical substance, cooled by water and willed into shape by skilled artisans. “All the same, there is poetry in there,” he concluded.
The event was held at Maison Baccarat in Paris, which boasts a monumental staircase under a massive, rotating chandelier that leads to a museum of crystal creations, including figurines, jewelry, vessels and glassware galore.
As a parting gift, guests were handed a small book of quotes and aphorisms by 18th-century French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, whose surname has become a byword for crafty, cynical diplomacy.
Starck named his latest Baccarat collection Talleyrand, the chef of the evening piling crabmeat into the new range’s crystal caviar dish, wild strawberries and tiny meringues into a Champagne coupe. It also includes a votive and a jewelry tree. Prices start at 550 euros for a flute and run up to 4,500 euros for a large vase.
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