‘It was like a journey through the tastes,’ Andrea Mancuso remarks inside his booth for Maison Perrier-Jouët at Design Miami 2019, a cave-like structure that appears as if petals are blooming on the walls. The Milan-based designer is referring to his tasting session with cellar master Hervé Deschamps, who told him the stories that intertwine with the cuvées. Mancuso wanted to bring this experience to Miami for the project. It's an ode to nature that brings together the vineyards and cellars of the heritage champagne brand, which dates back to 1811.
Titled Metamorphosis, the installation at Design Miami is inspired by a painting of the champagne house’s Epernay vineyards during harvest. Mancuso composed 11,000 ceramic pieces to mimic the natural portrait – he tells me that each one is labelled and part of the scheme to achieve this intricate puzzle.
Using the lost wax cast process, and with the help of Italian ceramicists Alessio Sarri and Nuevoforme, Mancuso creates the four different sized ceramics, each which echo the base of a Perrier-Jouët champagne bottle in shape. The spectrum of colours in Metamorphosis represents the harvest in autumn – gradient hues develop in the stand like the season, from dark green to burnt orange.
‘Mancuso’s work for the House unites traditional craftsmanship with modern technology and is infused with Maison Perrier-Jouët’s vision of reinvented nature,’ says Axelle de Buffévent, style director at Maison Perrier-Jouët which has been collaborating with Design Miami for eight years now.
Above, installation view of Metamorphosis by Maison Perrier-Jouët and Andrea Mancuso at Design Miami. Below, performance at the ‘A Banquet of Nature’ at Faena Hotel in Miami. Photography: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Perrier-Jouët
Mancuso’s immersive space acts as theatre for six Metamorphosis glasses that were originally revealed in Tokyo last month. Each of these are lit in coves, showing the intricacy of each art work that took place at Berengo Studio in Murano – ‘they are one of a kind in Murano as they work with art and have skills to achieve the best results,’ Mancuso says.
To coincide with the collaboration, Perrier-Jouët also hosted ‘A Banquet of Nature’ at Faena Hotel in Miami– an immersive seven course culinary experience by Chef Pierre Gagnaire that paired Deschamps’s cuvées with the Metamorphosis glassware. The theatrical dinner set up was complete with a botanical forest surrounding the table, in keeping with the Art of the Wild theme, and a performance with the Metamorphosis collection.
‘It's like they trapped the time in that space,' he remembers of his visit to the cellars and vineyards, and the magic of its Art Nouveau heritage and extensive collection that can be felt at the Metamorphosis time capsule, and Perrier-Jouët’s Miami presence. §
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