Maison Hennessy has enlisted french jewelry designer Lorenz Bäumer to create 75 limited edition, hand-faceted Baccarat crystal carafes to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the USA.

The basketball-shaped bottle, which contains Hennessy’s Paradis cognac, was created by blowing a sphere into a mould that was then recut by Baccarat’s master craftsmen.

Each of the 75 carafes has a unique faceted surface designed to reflect the cognac it holds. The magnum is the result of unique jewellery and glasswork expertise of Baccarat. This famous crystal factory has been showcasing its expertise since 1764. In the heart of the workshops, the heat is intense. The crystal glows inside of the ovens. The glassmakers have only one goal: to capture light, provoke emotion, exalt beauty and strive for perfection.

Bäumer aimed to create a form in crystal that was immediately recognisable as a basketball. However, he also wanted the design to have a sense of fun with gold markings that follow the lines of a basketball.

“Working with crystal, recreating the aspects of a jewel was a real challenge,” Baümer says.

„It is essential to have fun when you create because it is translated into the creation that you make,“ said Bäumer.

„I liked to work the crystal to transform it into a jewel, to optimize the play of light, the facets to recreate the movement.“

Bäumer also designed an orange leather case for the basketball-shaped bottle that opens up to act as a kind of „trophy case“ display for the carafe. A golden key opens both the case and the bottle.

Each set is complete with a pair of Baccarat crystal glasses that match the bottle and an arced fusil pipette.

HENNESSY PARADIS

A legend since its creation in 1979, Paradis is an elegant, voluptuous blend for connoisseurs. It is the magnum opus of Maurice Fillioux, Hennessy’s sixth-generation Master Blender, a lifelong music lover who composed the cognac by selecting from among the rarest, most supple eaux-de-vie reserved in ancient oak barrels in the Chai Paradis cellar. Like so many notes in a musical score, their absolute balance is an ode to harmony, the expression of excellence in cognac-making savoir-faire.

Previously, Hennessy worked with Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry to create a crinkled gold bottle to mark the 150th anniversary of Hennessy X.O, while architect Daniel Libeskind created an angular bottle for the Richard Hennessy cognac.